


artificial light

by carnival_papers



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Modeling, Photography, Power Bottom Hux, Submissive Kylo Ren, gratuitous snarking, kylo ren: probable virgin, porn with (eventual) feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-06-03 01:55:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6591982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carnival_papers/pseuds/carnival_papers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a rule, Hux does not fuck models. But with Kylo Ren, he has to reconsider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

As a rule, Hux does not fuck models. He did, once, when he was just getting started—a man who looked so good through the lens of his camera that Hux had to see for himself—but since then, never. Models are whirlwinds of drama, always more interested in the glamour of the profession than actually working. And there’s the problem of power, too, of impressionable boys who think getting on their knees for you will ensure them more jobs. The first time that had happened, Hux had sighed, rolled his eyes, lifted the boy up by his bony shoulder and sent him on his way.

But Kylo Ren says, “You want me, right? That’s why you were manhandling me?” and he has to reconsider.

“Preposterous,” Hux sputters, slamming his laptop shut. “No, you were giving me nothing to work with; if I was going to get my shots, I—”

“Right, you _had_ to touch me that much.” He looks smug. Hux wants to clear the smirk off his face. “You can just say it, you know, you wouldn’t be the first.”

“I’m afraid you’re projecting,” Hux says. He packs the laptop into the messenger bag at his feet (Coach, black and oxblood) and surveys the studio. The makeup station beside him newly empty, free from Phasma’s sprawling collection of creams and powders. A bare clothes rack, only an hour earlier filled with McQueen and Mugler. Before him, the remnants of his beautiful set—paper stars, fairy lights, meticulously hand-painted backdrop—all destroyed, strewn across the floor. Each paper star ripped in halves or quarters, the strings of lights yanked from the plugs, the backdrop torn from where it was pinned to the wall, the galaxy spiraling out from its middle now interrupted by a jagged, fraying edge.

At the center of it all, Kylo Ren, who had arrived thirty minutes late with a pre-existing grudge, despite never having met Hux before, who had promptly announced that the set looked like shit, who was generally obstinate and useless during the shoot, whom Hux had to physically maneuver into the proper positions for the photos, who had thrown a child’s tantrum upon being so maneuvered. He’d tossed the stool across the room, nearly knocking over one of the light stands, and he’d taken the backdrop in his hands and torn it as he’d twisted it away from the wall.

“It looks better now,” Ren had said. Hux, furious, had stormed outside for a cigarette. He’d stood on the street, the Treasurer Slim trembling between his fingers, and listened to the noise of the city. Once the smoke and nicotine unfurled inside him, he began to calm enough that he could see clearly again.

Admittedly, the concept of the shoot was stupid. It was Snoke’s idea, the centerpiece of the first issue of _ORDER_. Hux has come to realize that the magazine is an old man’s folly—Snoke has more money than God and time to spare. But Hux’s father had insisted, and so Hux had carved out a time in his busy schedule for the shoot. Money talks.

He’d shot Ren in the ruins of the set, his heavy black eye makeup beginning to sweat off under the lights. Phasma had offered to reapply it, but Hux had thrown his hand back to stop her. Caught Ren in a strange pensive moment, looking out-of-place in the Margiela jacket, his shoulders almost too broad. He’d been staring at the destruction he’d caused, something like pleasure playing at his lips, and Hux had felt an impulse, a need, to capture it. Adjusted the focus, the zoom. Set Ren’s face in profile against the ruined backdrop, all the moles on his face an extension of the stars spilled across the canvas. There was movement, and there was feeling, and there was light in his oil-slick eyes.

“How long has it been,” Ren says suddenly. “Since someone fucked you.” His arms are crossed over his chest; his face is cast in shadow, the room gone dark now without Hux’s lights.

Too long. He’s been so busy, so much busier than he ever expected to be. This rise to photography stardom has consumed him. It was only a matter of time, he figures; he’s always expected he would end up here somehow. It’s in his blood, but moreover, he’s good at this, has always been good at this. Of course his father had scoffed ( _boy_ , he’d said, _when I taught you to frame a shot, I never guessed you’d be taking pictures of clothes like some kind of—_ ) but he’d hopped a plane to New York anyway, once _PAPER_ had come calling. From there it was _V_ , _Interview_ , and now, the inaugural issue of _ORDER_. There simply hasn’t been time for anyone. He’s hardly had time for himself.

Hux swallows hard. There’s a pulse in his stomach, a kind of pain twisting through him. “If me moving your arms is all it takes to get you this heated up, I’d hate to see how you’d respond to someone who actually liked you,” Hux says. His fingers tighten around the strap of his laptop bag. Tells himself that his interest in Ren is purely anthropological, that he wants to pick Ren apart to figure him out. Ren confounds him. How can such an unappealing set of features turn out so beautifully on film? How can such a graceless, destructive man become a collection of perfect curves and lines in the frame of a camera?

Ren steps forward, the endless dark pools of his eyes catching the little light left. He’s all thick lashes and soft lips and the sharp line of his nose. This is what Hux had sought to capture, this contrast of edges and softness, boyish charm with a man’s anger. He seizes Hux’s hand suddenly, presses it to his collarbone. “You touched me here,” Ren says, his hand immovable atop Hux’s. It’s like putting a finger to a hot stove; Hux swears he can feel his flesh burning. “Like you wanted me.”

He feels the muscles in his face twitch. Ren is too close. His fingertips are rough on Hux’s knuckles, callused. He _had_ touched Ren there, to turn him slightly, so that the light would illuminate the hollow of his pale neck and the dark moles speckling his skin. He’d caught Ren’s lips slightly parted, the fairy lights glowing behind him, bright jacket in contrast to the monochrome of his body. A pop of color so vibrant and delicious Hux had wanted to consume it. The click of the shutter, the flash of the lights.

They’d fallen into something of a rhythm, finally, after Hux had adjusted Kylo’s body then. Ren would twist, go limp, close his eyes ( _eyes open_ , Hux had said, every time) and Hux would frame, focus, snap. Something about the lines and curves of him had turned into magic on film, each photo composed and compelling. It had been a test, choosing which ones to send to Snoke. As he’d scrolled through them on his laptop, Hux could see each one as the cover of _ORDER_ , the first page of the spread. He’d shown his choices to Ren, and Ren had merely shrugged and begun to insist that Hux wanted to fuck him.

Ren hasn’t moved his hand away. Neither has Hux. Phasma left a long while ago, after removing Ren’s makeup and packing away her things. The studio is mostly silent, save for the rattle of the air conditioning unit, street noise leaking in from outside. And Ren’s breathing, measured and heavy. His thumb slips against Hux’s wrist. Hux meets his eyes.

“If you want to fuck me, you’d better get on with it. I have places to be,” Hux says. The words tumble out of his mouth without much thought. It’s been a long time, and he knows Ren wants this more than he’s letting on—the way he’s still holding onto Hux’s hand, how he’s gnawing at the inside of his cheek.

Those measured breaths suddenly stammer at Hux’s words. “Do you have—stuff,” Ren says, finally lifting his hand to slide the strap of Hux’s laptop bag down his shoulder again. He’s not careful. There’s not a careful bone in this man’s body. It clatters to the floor.

“No, I generally don’t come to work expecting _this_ ,” Hux says. Ren’s fingers are drifting to the buttons of his shirt, and Hux swats them away. “I’m not taking my clothes off for you.”

Ren frowns. “I think I have a—condom in here,” he says, yanking a jingling wallet from the back pocket of his ratty jeans. Coins spill out when he opens it, his hands shaking, and Hux has to stifle a laugh.

“My god, it’s like you’ve never done this before. Do you just stumble through life hoping things turn out your way?”

“Shut up,” Ren says, and he cuts Hux a look as he fishes a condom from the wallet. “Do you have lotion or something? Lube?”

 _Of course not_ , Hux wants to say, _what do you think I am_? But there’s a canister of virgin coconut oil in his backpack (bought as a moisturizer upon Phasma’s recommendation) and so he digs for that as Ren is shoving away his wallet and unsuccessfully trying to tear open the condom with his teeth. He finds the oil and Ren is still struggling. “You’re incompetent,” Hux says. He takes the condom from Ren’s mouth, fingertips grazing across those pink lips, and pushes the oil into Ren’s hand. Hux easily opens the foil wrapper, the familiar motions of feigned romance coming back to him. “Unbutton,” he says, tossing the wrapper to the ground.

Even at that, Ren is clumsy. His fingers slip over his zipper and button, quivering. It might be endearing if it weren’t so annoying, if he hadn’t pretended to be so confident and cocksure. Finally Ren gets his jeans down around his knees, and Hux can’t help but snort at the sight of his Batman-print boxers. _What a child_.

Ren stands there for a moment, clutching the canister of oil, staring at Hux. He looks more than a little scared. Hux finds himself wondering—maybe he really hasn’t ever done this before. Surely not. His face is strange, sure, but there are muscles beneath that oversized sweatshirt, and there’s something intriguing about the set of his mouth, the spots on his face. There are always desperate boys with desperate hands and desperate mouths. Someone must have.

“Are you helpless?” Hux says. “Get your cock out, come on.”

Ren shoots him a hard, cold look, but then he’s fumbling again, a little shy this time. Maybe it’s meant to be teasing, who knows—he’s easing the waistband of his boxers slowly down his thighs, cut hipbones slowly revealing themselves. There’s a bright pink tattoo, something floral, blooming at his hip. Hux resists the sudden urge to span it with his fingers, trace its thick black lines. Finally, Ren has his cock in his hand, half-hard.

 _For heaven’s sake_ , Hux thinks _._ Ren is lazily tugging at himself, muttering some apology under his breath. Perhaps he is helpless. Hux moves his hand away, wraps his fingers around Ren’s cock and moves in long, easy strokes. Feels him harden almost immediately, biting back soft noises that sound like moans. God, it’s been too long since he did this. Ren’s cock is heavy in his palm, substantial as the rest of him, but smooth to the touch. Hux imagines that Ren’s lips would feel this way—firm but giving, soft under his mouth—and then rejects that thought.

“I’ll come,” Ren says suddenly. “If you do that much longer, I mean. I’m kind of—it’s good.” His face is flushing, red spreading across those spotted cheeks. He swallows. “And you want me to fuck you, right, so I shouldn’t—come yet.”

Hux laughs, aloud this time, echoing in the cavernous studio. Rolls the condom down onto Ren’s cock. “How long’s it been since _you_ did this?” Hux says, as Ren draws in a sharp breath at the slick latex against his skin. He can’t stand the feeling of lube on his fingers, so he wipes it on the stripe of Ren’s exposed skin, over the tips of those pink petals.

Ren looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t answer, only turns over the coconut oil in his hands. “My mom puts this in her hair,” he says, apropos of nothing.

“And I put it on my face, but you’re going to put it on your cock, get to it.” He doesn’t ask why Ren is thinking of his mother at a time like this. Ren’s existence here evokes a series of questions—why this sudden fixation with Hux wanting him? Why had he thrown such a tantrum earlier? Why is he so tentative, so nervous, in undressing?

But Hux doesn’t ask those things. Questions would compromise this happening, and he’s already got his belt unbuckled. Ren is unscrewing the top of the coconut oil and looking at him with a bewildered hunger. There’s something about this that makes Hux burn—Ren watching him this way, as if through a viewfinder, focusing first on Hux’s fingers at the button of his trousers, then on the single canine tooth biting at Hux’s bottom lip, then, finally, meeting Hux’s eyes. Hux observes and captures; to be the one observed and captured now sets him aflame.

The room is filled with the sweet scent of coconut when Ren finally gets the jar open and scoops some onto his fingers. He’s slow about getting it on, seems to sense Hux’s own want now. “Do you—like this?” Ren says, words lazy on his tongue, almost slurred. “Me touching myself.”

“Don’t be idiotic,” Hux says, caught. Urges his fingers to work, not to slip or falter at the button of his trousers.

“I bet you wish I was touching you instead.” Ren holds back a moan, but it breaks from his throat, animal and strained. Hux can’t help but squirm. He gets his thumbs under the waistband of his briefs and shoves them down below his ass, his cock stretching toward his stomach now. He hasn’t been exposed like this to someone in a while, years, and there’s an old teenage anxiety whirling in his chest. _Will he like me? Will he want me?_ Hates himself for doubting that he could be desirable. He used to be good at this. Ren probably wouldn’t know the difference, but there’s still worry nagging at him. “You want me to touch your cock, you’ve been—thinking about it all day,” Ren breathes.

Hux rolls his eyes. Ren might be attractive if he could learn when to shut up. God, where to stand, where to let this play out—the mirrored makeup table is clear now, that seems the most appropriate surface. He strokes idly at his cock as he moves over to it, not letting himself linger on what exactly is about to happen. “Get over here,” Hux demands, pleased at how quickly Ren obeys, like a loyal dog.

“You want me to suck you off,” Ren says. “Want me on my fucking knees for you.” Ren draws his tongue across his lips, his hand still working at his cock. He sets the oil on the table, reaches for Hux’s cock with his other hand. Hux swats him away again.

“Stop talking,” Hux says. Turns away from Ren, sets himself on his forearms. His face is close to the mirror; Ren looms behind him like a specter. “You’ll use your hand first. And if you get any of that oil on these clothes, I’ll—kill you, or something.”

Ren’s breath quivers. He reaches for the oil again, slicks his fingers. Hux watches him in the mirror, how he moves slowly and carefully, unsure. He hesitates. “Should I—can I touch your back?”

“Not with oily fingers, you can’t.” Ren is holding a hand helplessly in the air, hovering between them. “Lick them clean.”

Ren eases one index finger into his mouth and the other into Hux. Hux’s body tenses immediately, even as Ren’s finger stills. In the mirror, his eyes are closed, his cheeks tight as he sucks at the finger between his lips. A curl of pleasure winds its way through Hux at the first bend of Ren’s finger in him. He’s forgotten this sensation, this feeling of being found from the inside. Ren parts his lips with an exaggerated smack, pink tongue grazing his fingertip. Then he’s inserting his middle finger, eyes and lips closing again, Hux heaving a sigh at the feeling of it slipping inside him.

“Tell me how it tastes,” Hux says. Ren’s fingers are still searching, pulling him apart. _Fuck_. If he were the begging type, he would ask for more. Another shock twists up Hux’s spine, down to his cock. Can’t stop his hips from jerking forward. There’s sweat beading at his hairline beneath the lights of the makeup mirror, and Ren is teasing his long middle finger out of his mouth.

“Sweet,” Ren says. “You can taste, if you want.” Offers his hand to Hux, unthinking, unpracticed, a third finger pushing into him. Hux can’t keep from groaning; it hurts but it’s good, Ren’s fingers pumping in and out now, filling him up. “You’d like it.”

“You don’t know what I like,” Hux says, words interrupted by gasps for breath. Ren’s fingers curl at just the right place, _there, fuck_ , and Hux drops his head against the makeup table.

“You like this.”

Unfortunately true. “Stop teasing me,” Hux pants, lifting his head to see again. Ren has his last two fingers in his mouth now, sucking at them obscenely, his full lips wet with saliva and oil. Hux thinks of tasting them, Ren’s lips or his fingers, how he’d draw his tongue over Ren’s knuckles or press his own mouth against Ren’s soft bottom lip. He’d loved coconut candy as a child, had luxuriated in its exotic sweetness. Ren’s mouth would taste like that, his tongue and cheeks, and Hux would devour it. Him.

Ren withdraws his fingers from his mouth and from Hux, who sighs at the loss. “You want my cock,” Ren says, getting a hand around himself, stroking in the excess oil from his fingers. “My big, fat cock inside you.”

“It isn’t sexy when you talk like that,” Hux says. “It’s like a very bad porn.” Ren is just out of reach, not quite close enough behind him. Hux grinds his hips against nothing, a sort of begging, knowing how ridiculous and desperate he must look. And again, Ren teases him, self-satisfied, the tip of his cock against Hux, held there tentatively. This is pubescent, teenaged, a backseat fumbling. Hux grinds his hips again, feeling Ren almost inside him for a moment, and huffs. “Yes, I want your cock, now fuck me. For God’s sake.”

Ren grunts when he pushes into Hux, then goes still. His palm, slick and hot, clenches at Hux’s hip, finger over the waistband of Hux’s briefs. Hux screws his eyes shut, grits out a curse between his teeth, prays for Ren to move.

He doesn’t. His reflection is dumbfounded, jaw gone slack, dark eyes glazed over. His breaths are shallow; his mouth gapes. Hux pushes back against him, tries to instigate some movement, but Ren remains still.

“Tell me what to do,” Ren says suddenly, voice strangled in his throat. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh my _fucking_ god.” Hux whips his head around, thinking of strangling Ren, his pale throat beneath Hux’s hands. “Are you joking?”

Ren’s throat moves, swallowing, and Hux imagines it against his palms. An almost imperceptible shake of his head. His fingers tighten around Hux’s hip. Were Ren not literally inside of him right now, Hux would storm out. The sheer ridiculousness of this, of being made out to have been interested in Ren, of having this dangled in front of him until he wanted it—could no longer resist it.

Hux groans. “It’s not difficult! Just—just move, my god, if I’d known this would be such a trial—”

And then Ren is drawing out of him so slowly that it stops Hux’s breath, his fullness suddenly gone. “Like that?” Ren asks, the words barely audible.

“Again,” Hux says. Ren pushes in once more, and Hux’s fingers clench into fists, his nails digging into the heels of his hands. He’d forgotten this, how sex can make every part of him ache, make his whole body feel like it’s twisting into itself, make him want to beg for more. His back curves involuntarily; he catches a glimpse of Ren’s reflection, looking focused and unsure. Ren pulls out again without prompting, the entire length of him withdrawn and then gently returned, each lazy thrust welcome, each of Ren’s ever-louder moans savored. In a moment, Hux is falling back against Ren in time, pushing back when Ren pushes forward, urging him deeper, harder.

Hux finds himself wishing the makeup table had something for him to grip. His forearms slip a little every time Ren plunges into him, the table squeaking across the floor inch by inch. It’s hot under the lights—he hadn’t accounted for this, hadn’t expected this to take so long—and Hux is sweating inside his Balenciaga jacket. “Fuck,” Ren is saying, “you’re—you’re really—”

“Faster,” Hux says, a cramp beginning to form in his thigh. His cock twitches against his stomach; he thinks he ought to have opted for the chair over the makeup table, so he’d have something easy to rut against, desperate as he’s become. Ren’s face is turning red, blush spreading down his neck now, throat bobbing with each low moan. He’s tentative at this, too, and though his hips move more quickly, his thrusts are shallow, too careful. “I won’t break, Ren.”

“Yeah, but I’ll—”

“Don’t you _dare_ come yet,” Hux says. The words are snarled, Hux’s lip curling. Ren flinches a little, loses the pace they’ve only just fallen into. “Your hands, I want your fucking hands.” He reaches back, grabs Ren’s still-slick palm from his hip and secures it around his cock. Hux guides Ren’s hand over his own cock, moves him slowly, deliberately, thrusting up into his palm when Ren drives into him again, finally hard enough. He’ll be sore in the morning, maybe won’t be able to walk home. Good.

If he could, he’d photograph this—a Polaroid of their hands wrapped around Hux’s cock, slick with oil and sweat, his thin fingers over Ren’s thick, square ones. He has the sudden strange feeling that Ren could easily snap his bones, could crush him if he so desired. But Ren doesn’t want that, Ren wants—this, Hux supposes, the opportunity to fuck someone, to play at intimacy, to be wanted. The photo would be like an early Mapplethorpe, just a dark snapshot disconnected from them, from reality. Only hands and his cock and come (he realizes he’s coming now, flashbulbs going off in his head as the reflection in the mirror blurs, his body stammering like a shutter, Ren behind him moaning). But Mapplethorpe shot in black and white, and this would be in color, yes: the cobalt blue waistband of his briefs beneath the pale pink of his cock; the white hem of his shirt contrasted with the wiry strawberry blonde hair shimmering gold; focus on the caramel-colored freckles on his knuckles, the chocolate brown spot at the base of Ren’s thumb. Together, they’d watch the picture emerge from the grey murk of the Polaroid, and maybe Ren would gasp at it, maybe he’d be shocked, but Hux would put it in a magazine, in a gallery, say, _look what I made, look what I can do_.

He slumps against the makeup table, face hot. Gradually becomes aware of Ren still in him, his thrusts uneven, and the come settling on his and Ren’s knuckles. He’s grateful for Ren’s sturdy body behind him—he fears he would fall now, were Ren not there. The orgasm had snuck up on him, just a spark at first, then a snap, a shot. _Ren_ , he wants to say, _with some practice, you could really be a good lay_.

“Hux,” Ren is murmuring, “can I come now?”

Hux can only manage a nod, and then Ren is back to thrusting slowly, groans rumbling deep in his belly—Hux can feel it against his back when Ren curves over him, sheathes himself fully and goes still, only his hips jerking slightly. Ren drapes himself over Hux, sprawling like an animal sunning itself, his broad chest heaving, his weight nearly too heavy to bear. There’s a weird intimacy to Ren’s chin resting on Hux’s shoulder, to hearing him catch his breath even as he sighs, finishing.

“That was good,” Ren pants. “I think, I mean—you came. So. I made you come.”

“You’re very irritating.” Hux lifts up a little. “God, I’ve got fucking come and coconut oil all over me.”

Ren smirks. “Not all over,” he says, “just your hand and your hip and your ass.” At this last item, he pinches Hux’s ass between his fingers, and almost involuntarily, Hux smacks him hard on the chest with the hand not still on his cock.

“Do that again and I’ll make sure you never get another job,” Hux says. “Clean me up. There are tissues in my bag.”

Finally, Ren pulls out, rolling his eyes, and rummages through the bag for the packet of tissues. Hux hadn’t expected to feel so empty without him—maybe it’s just been too long since someone fucked him like this, since he had to deal with the inevitable parting afterwards, the awkward cleaning and disposal of evidence. Hux watches in the mirror as Ren yanks the condom off with a snap, wraps it in a tissue, then dries his cock and hand of lube and oil and congealing come. Pulls up his ridiculous boxers and jeans, balls up the tissue, deposits it on the makeup table. With a fresh tissue, he cleans up Hux. Hux also hadn’t expected how infantile that would make him feel, as if he were incapable of doing it himself. It’s sort of nice to have someone else do the work, though, so he lets Ren turn him around, cinch up his briefs and trousers, button them with newly-dry hands.

“You’ve missed a spot,” Hux says once Ren has buttoned him up. He holds his come-covered hand before Ren’s face, and Ren only grins. “What?”

Ren takes Hux’s hand in his (Hux thinks again of how he would frame this photo, their fingers slipping between each other) and brings it carefully to his mouth. With focus and precision, Ren draws his warm, wet tongue over Hux’s knuckles. Licks away the come, refuses to break eye contact with Hux.

He realizes he should be repulsed. Ren is probably the type to get off on being called dirty and disgusting, and so maybe that’s what he’s going for here, but—Hux can’t fault him for being eager and thorough. It almost makes up for that pinch. Hux thinks of asking how it tastes—Ren would tell him in detail, no doubt, how the lingering sweetness of the coconut cut the salt, how he wanted more. Ren would want more. _Let me photograph this_ , Hux would say, and in the viewfinder he would zoom in on Ren’s lips, the tip of his tongue just grazing Hux’s skin, the stubble beginning to appear on Ren’s jaw. The critics would call the photo beautiful, quiet, soft, and only he and Ren would know what it really was. A mess that needed cleaning.

“Is that better?” Ren asks when he’s licked the last traces from Hux’s hand. Hux nearly shivers. His knuckles are still damp, skin colder than usual. Ren’s plush lips quirk with a smile. (Hux immediately wonders what he’s doing, focusing so much on Ren’s lips—he’s kissed plenty of boys with gentle mouths; there’s nothing inherently special about Ren’s.) “I like how you taste.”

“Oh, Christ,” Hux says, and snatches his hand away from Ren. “You’re repulsive.”

Ren shrugs. “You still wanted to fuck me, so.” Runs a hand through his hair, fingers catching the curls and sweeping them back out of his eyes. “I gotta jet. Places to go, people to see. You know.”

“You’re going to help me pick up this mess you made,” Hux says, stern, gesturing at what’s left of the set he spent so long designing, the paper stars he folded in his apartment for nights on end, swore at when the creases came out wrong. Phasma had laughed at him, but he’d been sort of proud of his little creations, knowing they’d be in a magazine. And of course Ren had been careful to rip each one apart until they were unrecognizable. The boor.

“I’m not, actually. But have fun.” Ren turns, trips over the threshold on his way out of the studio. _Serves him right,_ Hux thinks when he hears Ren cursing as the door slams shut.

And then he’s alone, his hand clammy from Ren’s tongue, his body aching, his set a ruin around him. He sighs, scratches his head, and gets to work collecting the pieces of backdrop and stars. The shoot feels like a distant memory, a faded photograph from some other time. Had Ren really sat here, his eyes dark with makeup, dressed in Margiela and Moschino, and looked into his camera? Hux had observed him, a caged animal, and plotted portraits, framed his face and hands and the clothes—that was the important part, he had to remind himself, it’s about selling the clothes—and made him something magical, a piece of art.

As he gathers up the last of the broken pieces, Hux decides which photo he’ll suggest for the cover of the magazine. He can conjure it perfectly in his head, thinks perhaps he’d realized the moment he’d taken the picture that there was something special about it. In it, the perpendicular diagonals of the torn backdrop and the fallen fairy lights form an X behind Ren, and his head is turned just slightly to the right, the slope of his nose in parallel to the long tear. The lights sparkle in his wide eyes, looking like constellations, and the tip of his tongue swipes across his top lip, catlike.

They’ll print it in black and white, he thinks. He’ll keep the colors for himself.


	2. Chapter 2

After four drinks and two rooftop cigarettes, Hux decides that he is not cut out for parties. Specifically, he is not cut out for _this_ party, which has thus far consisted of two hours of brown-nosing and trying to avoid making eye contact with the floor-to-ceiling banners of Ren’s face. He realizes now that he should have expected them—they _are_ celebrating the publication of _ORDER_ ’s first issue, after all—but instead, he’s spent most of the night simultaneously intrigued and disgusted by the strange curves of Ren’s cheekbones and jaw reproduced in crisp black and white, _ORDER_ stamped in red just above the thick curls swept back from his forehead.

Thankfully, Ren hasn’t yet made an appearance. _Probably terrorizing some other photographer into fucking him_ , Hux figures as he gnaws on the last gin-soaked ice cube in his glass. God, what an odd experience that was—it’s been three weeks or so, and he still can’t figure out what was meant by it. Somehow, in Ren’s chaos, he’d managed to take his best photos in months. And, of course, he hadn’t minded walking bowlegged afterward, despite the bizarre circumstances that had led to his being bent over the makeup table.

He hasn’t told anyone about this, not even Phasma, who sidles up to him now, offering another gin and tonic with a grin. “You’re hiding,” she says, shouting over the droning industrial music, and he drinks as if he’s dying of thirst. “Everyone here loves you.”

“If one more person brings up my father, I may actually vomit.” His tongue is heavy in his mouth, thick with liquor. “How drunk do I sound?”

Phasma smirks a little, a red beam of light passing over her face. “You sound like you’re having a great time. There are loads of bloggers here; you should go talk to them.”

“I prefer to be taken to dinner before having my arse kissed, thanks.” He shakes his head, rolls the cold, perspiring glass between his palms. In truth, he’d like to stay here, tucked into one of Finalizer’s back corners, away from the unending stream of admirers and social climbers and celebutantes, from the flash of society page cameras and the pointless small talk. There’s a growing sense of dread (or perhaps just nausea) stewing in his stomach, knowing that Snoke will soon make his way over, and that Hux will be required to chat with him, to thank him for the job, and probably to sing Ren’s praises. Just considering that makes throwing himself from the roof seem like a reasonable and desirable option.

“You’re so ungrateful,” she says, nudges him with her shoulder. The small push knocks him unsteady; he clutches the edge of the table to keep from stumbling over. “No more drinks for you.”

Hux giggles, an act which he is usually careful to avoid, since, as Phasma says, it makes him sound like some type of woodland creature. Now, though, he can’t help himself, and laughter spills from his liquored lips as he seizes Phasma’s wrist. He’s drawn in by the brightly-colored tattoos that spiderweb her forearm. _This_ , he thinks, curving his fingers over a storybook illustration of a princess in knight’s armor, _would make a great picture_. He’d focus on the play of ink over her pale skin, her veins snaking through geometric designs and patterns.

“You should—I want to photograph you,” he says. Phasma flinches, if not at his volume, then his wet grip on her arm. “It would be so good, Phas, I’d put you in a fucking magazine. A better magazine than fucking _ORDER_.”

She half-smiles, eases her arm from Hux’s hands. “Dearest, you say that every time you drink, and you’ve yet to follow through.”

Momentarily overwhelmed with guilt, he sputters, slurs, “I’ve just been so—”

“Terribly busy, I know.” She nods out toward the crush of people, the small raised stage where there’s suddenly light. The music begins to dim, a low murmur rising from the crowd. The distant clinking of glasses, a shadowy silhouette at the edge of the stage. “Looks like the supreme leader himself has something to say. You’d better get over there.”

Hux finds himself led to the area near the stage, Phasma’s steady hand between his shoulderblades, steering him. As a child, he’d been dragged this way, to parties and banquets and receptions in his father’s honor. Always forced into the limelight, forced to stand between his father and mother, to smile and clutch his father’s hand, to nod excitedly when asked if he, too, wanted to be a photographer. He’d wanted to run away from the eyes on him, hide behind his mother’s legs—even as a teenager, he’d thought of disappearing into shadows, concealing himself behind his camera—it’s so much easier to watch than be watched. Now, those old nerves sneak into him again, amplified by the drink and the crowd and the fact that, for once, this is truly about him.

His stomach drops when Snoke steps into the light. Snoke is old but still imposing at his full height, and he lets his grandeur drip from him like honey from a spoon. He reeks of money—the source of which, Hux has no idea—and he wields it without care or caution. Snoke knows how to put on a show. He seems to shimmer in the spotlight, his navy suit threaded through with shining silver strands, the caps on his back molars glimmering when he grins.

Hux, vision blurring, focuses on Snoke’s hands as he quiets the crowd, the growing applause that echoes in Hux’s ears. Renewed nausea sears in Hux’s throat. He wishes for his camera, for something to hold onto, to be anywhere else. Phasma’s palm is still safe at his back, and she moves her hand in slow, soothing circles over his spine and shoulders. She knows him too well—the night before his first _Vogue_ shoot, when they’d only been working together for a few months, he’d bent double over her toilet, vomiting the entire contents of his stomach, nearly shaking with anxiety. And she had calmed him in this way, perched half-on the tank, her manicured fingers stroking his back with a care and a gentleness he had not realized he needed.

“Good evening,” Snoke says, voice resonant and low. “How is everyone? Are we enjoying ourselves?”

There’s a cheer, the sound of which is ear-splitting and makes Hux flinch. His fingers twitch into fists, his nails cutting into the heels of his hands. More flashbulbs, thankfully aimed at Snoke now.

“I’d like to thank you all for attending, and for your tireless support of _ORDER_. So many of you were involved in so many ways—I couldn’t begin to thank them all. But there are a few people I’d like to mention specifically.” He rattles off a list of investors, socialites who’d tweeted about the magazine, graphic designers and writers who’d worked tirelessly to finish the issue in time.

Hux sort of tunes out, thinking of how, once Snoke shuts up, he’ll go to the roof and smoke a cigarette, and the city lights will stretch out before him endlessly, and by then, maybe his vision will have cleared and he’ll be able to breathe. Perhaps Phasma will bring him another drink, or she’ll stand there with him, and they’ll finally make plans to photograph her. He wants to; she’s his friend, his only friend, and besides, when was the last time he photographed anyone for art’s sake? For years now, it’s been about selling clothes, or shoes, or a lifestyle. But once, he only wanted beauty, in all its grim and garish colors, held in the hardened amber of a photograph.

“And of course, I _must_ recognize the brilliant team who created the beautiful, striking cover that’s graced the walls of Finalizer tonight. Our acclaimed photographer, Brendol Hux II, and the new face of _ORDER_ , Kylo Ren!” Snoke makes a sweeping gesture with his arms, first in Hux’s direction (a few people turn to look at him; Phasma’s hand tightens protectively around his shoulder) and then to the other side of the crowd. Hux squints that way— _is Ren here?_

And then Hux spots it—the familiar profile, with its sharp nose and soft lips, bathed in red light. Ren. It had been stupid to expect him not to be here. Still, just because he’s here doesn’t mean they have to interact, or that he ever has to speak to Ren again. Ren is turning, and people are snapping selfies with him, cell phone flashes illuminating his spotted face.

“I need another drink,” he murmurs to Phasma. Someone is trying to shake his hand, someone is trying to talk to him, Snoke is saying “Enjoy the evening!” and the music, bassy and rumbling, is back in Hux’s head, destroying his ability to focus on anything but getting away from Ren. He remembers the makeup table beneath his forearms, Ren’s hot weight over him. On the subway home, he’d leaned against the pole he gripped, trying to make sense of what had happened: Ren had fucked him, and it hadn’t exactly been _good_ , but he’d enjoyed it, and that was the end of it.

But of course, it can’t be easy. Phasma pulls him through the crowd, elbowing away the hangers-on who reach for Hux. “Funny how they never mention me, eh?” she says, only half-joking. “Let’s get you some water, poor thing.”

She plants him at an empty table near the bar, next to a column bearing the photo of Ren’s face. “I’ll be right back,” Phasma says, and she disappears off again. He’s been followed back here by pockets of people, faces he might ordinarily recognize from tabloids and previous jobs. They crowd him at the table, and he forces himself to carry on polite conversation— _I’m not sure what’s next for me_ , he says, _no, my father isn’t here_ , he says, _of course he’s happy I’m following in the family tradition_.

Brendol Hux would, truly, be even more uncomfortable here than Hux is. Hux pleases himself with that, this little act of rebellion—first of all, his father would never come to Queens, but, moreover, he wouldn’t be caught dead in this room, with these people. Artists. His father has always considered himself, first and foremost, a newsman, and his camera merely an extension of his pen. He would scoff at this club, at the photo on the cover, at Hux.

But, thankfully, he isn’t here, though Hux can’t bring himself to relax much. He handles the stream of people with aplomb. _That Hux is so charming_ , they’ll say on their trains home, because he is good at faking it, because he knows how to time his smiles and laughs and how to appear interested when, really, he is searching the room for Ren.

Who he spots instead is Snoke, always recognizable in a crowd: that towering body, his pockmarked face, bellowing laugh which echoes over the music. Someone is talking at Hux about a shoot he did for _Interview_ , but Hux is watching Snoke. He passes through the club like a snake through grass, shaking hands and clapping people on their shoulders as he moves with ease.

There’s something about Snoke which puts Hux off—there always has been, even when he was a child and Snoke was just his father’s strange rich friend. Snoke has a way of throwing his wealth around, of letting it speak for him. He has, as Hux’s mother might say, too many fingers in too many pies: global stock exchanges, arts foundations, preparatory schools, and now the magazine. And there’s an air about him, too, that turns Hux’s nose—something hungry, easily manipulative, a constant reminder that those he speaks to are merely his playthings.

Hux realizes now that Snoke is coming toward him, and Phasma is, predictably, nowhere to be found. He wishes for a drink, thinks of dashing for the bathroom or the roof or anywhere else to get away from Snoke. Some part of him knows he ought to be thankful that Snoke has taken notice of him—Snoke has pull in many circles, the kind of pull that leads to awards and fellowships—but now, half-drunk and sobering quicker than he’d like, he thinks only of running.

“Brendol!” Snoke shouts, and waves in his direction. The people at Hux’s table turn in unison, as if choreographed, and Hux sighs.

“If you’ll just excuse me,” he says, figuring it’s better to get this over with than to prolong his suffering. The beginnings of a headache throb between his eyebrows; he will surely be hung over in the morning. For now, he approaches Snoke tentatively, careful not to stumble, the drowning feeling of nausea rising once more.

Snoke extends a clammy, veiny hand to him, which Hux takes, reluctant. His handshake is crushing—Hux has to bite his tongue to keep from yelping. “Brendol,” Snoke says again, “delighted to see you here.”

“I go by Hux professionally, you know. Just Hux.” His words are clipped, surprisingly articulate for how much he’s had to drink. HUX: the letters square and sturdy, as if carved into the marble of a Roman temple. No extra baggage of his father’s name, or the notation that he is not the first ( _a cruel thing_ , he thinks, _to doom a child to live in his father’s shadow_ ). Only HUX, like an incantation, something mystical, like—

“Like Cher?” Snoke says, and then laughs when Hux doesn’t answer. “It’s good to remind people whose son you are. Looks good for both of us.”

“I’m quite accomplished in my own right—” Hux starts, but then Snoke throws a hand against Hux’s chest, his knuckles rough and scraping even through the fine material of the Zegna shirt. Hux flinches, straightens, tries not to make too much of the contact. “Excuse me?”

“The pictures you took of Kylo. They’re very good.” Snoke’s palm is moving from Hux’s chest to his shoulder, gripping there over his jacket. He wonders distantly if Snoke’s fingers will leave oil stains on the satin, oozing into the floral pattern’s delicate petals and stems. Then he registers _Kylo_ , which is strange to hear, makes him shake his head a bit.

“Do you know he ruined my set? He came in late and got upset with me and ripped up the backdrop and the stars and lights. I didn’t put those things on your expense account, I _bought_ them, and he has—he has absolutely no respect for anyone.” Hux feels himself babbling, spilling too much. “I sincerely think I’d rather die than work with him again, he just—doesn’t understand how to _do_ anything, so I had to move him into the proper positions and then he was—”

A sudden spell of dizziness. Snoke’s fingers gripping tight, too tight. Hux swallows down whatever words he might have said— _and then he was insisting I wanted to fuck him, can you believe that?_ —and instead searches the room for Phasma. More than likely some girl has found her and dragged her into the bathroom, pinned her against the wall and kissed her, as is usually the case at these events. He needs water, he needs air, he needs Snoke not breathing down his neck.

“Yes, Kylo does have a bit of an ego sometimes. Haven’t a clue where he gets it from,” Snoke says, conspiratorial. Hux forces a chuckle, despite feeling like he’s missed out on a joke. “I’ll discuss it with him. But—the pictures are very good. _Very_ good.”

As if they would be anything other than very good. “Thank you,” Hux mutters, and he wishes Snoke would move his hand away. Every so often, he feels the pinprick pressure of Snoke’s fingertip pushing hard against the joint of his shoulder, the pain driving straight down to his bone and settling there in the marrow.

“Don’t you think Kylo looks good?” His mouth is too close to Hux’s ear, he stinks of whiskey and cheap cologne—a rich man without taste, _disgusting_ —and he points with his whole hand out to the center of the club, where the lights are pulsating red and white. Ren is there, and Hux finally allows himself to focus in on him: his unsteady gait, the too-broad shoulders stretching his wrinkled shirt, that crimson light drenching the dark curls of his hair. “In the pictures, I mean,” Snoke clarifies, chuckling again.

“He’s an interesting subject to photograph, certainly.” He does not think of how Ren came alive in the lens of his camera, how, that night, he’d spent hours poring over the pictures on his laptop until his vision went blurry, marveling at how Ren caught light.

“He looks very innocent in your pictures. Boyish.” Ren is pushing through people, eventually lingering under one of the columns where the magazine cover hangs. For a moment, he exists in double: a perfect version of Ren magnified above him, grayscale, and the bright, colorful truth of him below. And, as he had underneath Ren, Hux thinks of how he would frame this tableau, with Ren outside himself and outside everything, low light, the print flooded with red ink. “The two of you will do another spread together in the next issue. I want to feature the new Balmain.”

Hux turns his head so fast the vertebrae in his neck crack. “Sorry, what?”

“I think something showcasing the military aspects of the new line—very brutalist, perhaps, with Kylo looking like he’s returned from war. Compelling, don’t you think?”

And now Snoke is watching Ren too, and Hux’s stomach turns. Snoke’s faux-parental doting is underscored with a simmering, predatory hunger that sets Hux uneasy. “I’ll have to check my schedule,” Hux says, “I’m not sure I can work it in.”

The thought of facing Ren again is too much—Hux knows that, were Ren to offer himself as he had before, to insist once more that Hux wanted to fuck him, Hux would be unable to refuse. Especially in Balmain, in a navy waistcoat with polished gold buttons, a military insignia gleaming on his chest, black leather gloves concealing those large hands—Hux would bend easily, give over in a second, nearly pop the buttons off the coat trying to undo them.

“I think you’ll find time,” Snoke says. “I know you’d hate to disappoint your father, tell him you’re not getting any jobs.”

 _I can’t disappoint him any more than I already do_ , Hux wants to say.

“A different model,” Hux says. “Ren is too destructive. I can’t work with him again.”

“Kylo needs the experience and the exposure. He’s doing runways over the summer and we need to get his face out there.” Snoke’s grip is tightening; Ren is taking a Heineken from a girl who stands too close to him, who touches his bicep and laughs too loudly. He’s distracted by something. Snoke is digging his nails in hard, pushing and pressing on Hux’s shoulder, pain jolting down his arm.

Hux snaps, “Does he want that, or do you?” He wrests himself from Snoke’s grip, finds that he is breathing heavily, but his head is clear now. Snoke’s hand, curled like a claw, hangs in the space between them.

“Brendol,” Snoke says, his tone too sweet, “don’t push.” He’s grinning, and then he’s laughing, and then he’s clapping Hux on the shoulder. “Just like your father. He always drinks too much at these things.”

“I have to go.”

“I’ll e-mail you.” Snoke pats his shoulder one last time, then departs. Hux, turning, feigns gagging when he finally sees Phasma clutching a glass of water, coming his way. Her hair is, predictably, disheveled, and there’s a suspicious purple smear at the base of her neck.

She offers up the glass. “Didn’t want to interrupt you two,” she says.

Hux downs the water in several quick gulps, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I wish you would have. He’s so fucking insufferable.”

“Poor dear,” she says. “At least he sprang for the open bar.”

“At the shittiest gay club in Queens. Doesn’t really count.” He nods out at Ren, who’s slumped against a column now, entertaining a man in glasses, looking disinterested. “Snoke is having me do another shoot with him. Ren.”

“Well, this last one turned out alright.”

“Lest we forget the temper tantrum that overgrown child threw on my set!”

She shrugs. “It worked out, though. You worry too much.”

He figures he should probably tell her what happened after the shoot. They’re friends, after all, and he supposes that’s the sort of thing friends share with one another. But talking about it makes it real, means it really happened, and he’s not entirely convinced that it wasn’t some type of anger-induced fever dream (though the bruises on his thighs suggest that it wasn’t).

Hux curls his toes in his Gucci wingtips. “He sort of—propositioned me. I know you’ll think I’m making this up but I swear to God it actually happened.”

Phasma stops reapplying her lipstick to arch an eyebrow at that. “Kylo Ren propositioned _you_?”

“Suspend your disbelief for a moment, please,” he says. The man in the glasses has left Ren now, and for a moment, Ren is alone, almost fading away into the dark. There’s a clump of people on the dance floor, all moving like one single-celled organism, grinding to the thumping, unmelodic electronic _shit_ that somehow passes for music here. At the center, he spots Snoke with his arms up, looking lecherous. He’s pushing through the people—no doubt getting too close to some of them, ‘accidentally’ brushing their lower backs or shoulderblades.

“I’m just shocked he propositioned anyone,” Phasma says. “He seems a bit stunted in that area.”

“He was. Is.” Ren is drawing a hand through his hair and Hux thinks of how, briefly, it had been soft against his cheek when Ren crumpled over him, tucked his chin over Hux’s shoulder and gasped for breath. In that moment, Hux had wanted to cling to that closeness, the notion that he could still be wanted, even if only by a destructive idiot boy. “He just kept saying, _you want to fuck me, right_?”—for this, Hux does a poor imitation of Ren’s weird Midwestern speech—“and I basically said, _no, I’d rather kill you or myself, actually_.”

Phasma snorts. “So did you?”

Hux realizes now that Snoke is heading for Ren. He takes long strides, and perhaps Ren knows he’s coming because of how he doesn’t run—he just stands there, still, waiting. “What, kill him?”

“Don’t be coy,” Phasma says. Hux can make out Snoke saying _Kylo!_ and Ren turning to him, half-empty bottle of Heineken dangling lazily between his fingers. Snoke leans in too close when he talks. Ren’s mouth twitches, he swigs from his beer, not really paying attention to Snoke. But Snoke presses in further until he’s cornered Ren.

Something like concern begins to spin in Hux’s head. Even from here, he can see Snoke starting to shout, grabbing Ren at the place where his neck meets his shoulder, squeezing. Ren drinks, looks away, as if he has heard this before, as if he is used to this. Snoke had talked about Ren as if he were a commodity, just something to be consumed. The nature of modeling, perhaps, but Snoke seems to want to devour Ren himself. He grabs Ren by the face when Ren refuses to look at him, the motion almost violent. A fight-or-flight response bursting somewhere inside Hux. He stammers, “Do you have my cigarettes?”

Phasma digs the Treasurer Slims from her bag and presses them into Hux’s palm. “You’d better tell me,” she says, “or I’m going to ride your arse about it for the next six years.”

“I have to go do my one good deed for this century,” Hux says, and Phasma huffs as he walks away, slipping the cigarettes into his coat pocket.

Hux wishes he still felt drunk so he could blame this potentially horrible decision on the alcohol. As it stands, his mind is clear, and this seems the only course of action: drag Ren away from Snoke, smoke a cigarette on the roof, wait for Ren’s _thank you_ , get the fuck out of this terrible party.

As he approaches, the noise of their conversation rises over the music. Snoke is hissing about Ren’s parents— _Your father is a drunk, do you want to go back to that?_ _And if you think your mother still wants you after everything you’ve done, well_ —and Ren is rolling his eyes, shaking his head free of Snoke’s hand, like this is a common occurrence. _Okay, okay, fine_ , Ren is saying, chewing the inside of his cheek. He looks away from Snoke, and his gaze lands right on Hux. Ren’s eyes widen, then he smirks, and Hux feels caught.

“Hux,” Ren says. “Long time no see.”

Snoke looks pissed. Starts sputtering, “Brendol, I—” and straightens himself, steps back from Ren.

“Don’t,” Hux says. He grabs Ren by the wrist (Ren flinches, his eyes darting down to Hux’s hand) and pulls him away. “Just need to steal him for a moment, thanks!”

“So you’re back for round two?” Ren says as Hux is dragging him through the club. He stumbles behind Hux, not quite keeping pace.

“Shut up. I’m doing you a favor.” Hux pulls Ren into the emergency stairwell marked as a fire exit—after two trips to the roof earlier this evening, he knows the alarm won’t go off. Though he wouldn’t care much if it did.

The stairwell is lit in harsh fluorescents, too bright for Hux. He squints against the light, knows he must look ghastly pale and sweaty. Ren squirms his hand out of Hux’s grip and Hux loosens his tie, catches his breath for a moment. “Should I lock that door?” Ren asks, running a thumb over the cuff of his shirt.

“It’s an emergency exit, you imbecile, it doesn’t lock. We’re going to the roof.” Hux takes the stairs slowly, a tight grip on the handrail. Ren, predictably, bounds ahead of him, taking the steps two at a time.

“You’re nasty, Hux. I like that,” Ren shouts from a few steps above him. He’s in ill-fitting clothes, a too-short dress shirt probably bought from a department store clearance rack (Hux had noticed the scratch of the synthetic fibers just in the brief moments he held Ren’s wrists) and too-loose pants, which hang low on his hips and reveal his Christmas light-printed boxers—unseasonal for April.

“Jesus Christ,” Hux says.

There’s a sign on the door at the top of the stairs which reads ROOFTOP – NO ENTRY, but Ren yanks it open anyway, doesn’t bother to hold it for Hux. It slams shut, the noise reverberating down the stairwell, through Hux’s body. He fumbles in his pocket for the pack of cigarettes when he finally makes it to the door. Takes a big deep breath when he steps outside.

Though he’s been in the city for nearly six years now, Hux still hasn’t grown tired of the nighttime view. The sky so black it’s almost purple, pinpricked with the glow of streetlights and skyscrapers and neon. When he’d first come here, when the jobs dried up for months at a time, this is what he turned to: rooftops, the city, light. He’d trespassed in apartment buildings, followed a boy to the roof of his hotel, once, and taken perfect square pictures of New York’s night lines, those moments when something bright collides with something dark and makes shadow magic.

He thinks of this, that collision of light and dark, when he sees Ren standing at the edge of the roof, leaned against the wall that keeps him from falling story after story. He’s messing with something on his phone, the blue glow casting sharp across his cheeks and nose. Hux retrieves a cigarette and his lighter. Holds the cigarette between his teeth as he lights it, approaching Ren.

“It’s nice out here,” Ren says. “Even though Queens is the worst.” He shoves his phone into his back pocket, works a hand through his hair. A nervous tic, Hux figures, though he thinks briefly of twisting one of Ren’s curls around his finger.

Hux swallows that thought down with a drag from his cigarette. Ren is staring at him. “Better than being stuck with Snoke,” Hux says, exhaling smoke in a smooth stream. “I can’t take him for more than two minutes. That’s being generous.”

Ren shrugs. “Guess I’m used to it.”

“He was all over you. I can’t stand it when he does that.” Hux brings the cigarette to his lips again.

“Possessive,” Ren says, smirking. Smoke curls at the end of Hux’s cigarette, its tip igniting red when he inhales. Then the cigarette is plucked from between his fingers, and Ren holds it to his mouth. “These are bad for you.”

“Thank you, Dr. Ren, I had no idea,” Hux says. Reaches for the cigarette, but Ren bobs out of the way, takes a drag. “Those are very expensive!”

Ren breathes in too much smoke, immediately chokes and coughs and drops the cigarette. That sets Hux off, and he grabs Ren by the wrists even as he hacks, half-coughing and half-laughing. Hux pushes Ren against the wall, Ren giving in easily, letting himself be pushed. He feels the bones of Ren’s wrists under his palms, through the cheap scratchy material, and Ren’s laugh feels like the only sound in the whole city. This close, he catches the stubble on Ren’s jaw, the details of each spot on his face, his chapped lips, his crooked teeth revealed when he grins.

Then there is the taste of stale beer in Hux’s mouth, a tongue thrust unceremoniously between his teeth, a particularly large nose pushed against his cheek. Ren is doing too much at once, trying to lick and bite and kiss. Hux drops Ren’s wrists and pulls back, leaving Ren mouthing hopelessly at the air.

“Excuse me!” Hux snaps, wiping at his wet face with his hand.

Ren’s brow furrows. “Is this another thing where you act like you don’t want me but secretly you really do?” Blush is spreading across his cheeks.

“No!” Hux is wishing for a drink, fingers trembling as he feels for his cigarettes again. “You just—assaulted my mouth, Jesus, do you ever _think_?”

“Um,” Ren says. “We had sex.”

“That doesn’t mean I want to kiss you!” Hux throws his hands up. “It doesn’t mean anything!”

Ren blinks a few times. Swallows. Stares at the ground. “I—you brought me up here. Because you wanted to—”

“To get you away from Snoke, because he’s a fucking creep,” Hux says. No more cigarettes left. He hurls the empty pack over the wall—for a moment the wind catches it, and it soars before falling out of view. “Do you have _any_ social skills?”

“I was kind of sheltered.”

“Clearly,” Hux says. “Jesus.”

Ren murmurs something unintelligible. He’s still looking at his feet, nudging a piece of broken brick with the toe of his shoe.

“What?” Hux says, exasperated.

“Was it good, at least?” Ren asks. Sort of pleads. “Was it a good kiss?”

And even though he knows it is cruel, though he knows Ren will misinterpret this, too, Hux lifts his head, cups Ren’s cheek, his thumb lingering at the corner of Ren’s mouth, and leans in slow. Close. A breath from Ren’s open mouth, Ren’s eyes gazing frantic into his own, searching. Then Hux kisses him, tenderly, the way he had once been kissed on a roof, like all of New York City would stop for them. Ren sighs into his throat and Hux swears he can taste it on his tongue, which he eases into Ren’s mouth, tickling soft lines behind Ren’s teeth. He follows the trail of Ren’s cheekbone with his thumb, dances over moles and freckles, and strokes the hidden smooth place behind Ren’s ear. When he feels Ren’s hand settle at his lower back, Hux pulls away, letting his teeth graze Ren’s bottom lip as he does.

“Oh,” Ren says, the word not quite a word. “Okay.”

The self-satisfied smile blooming on Hux’s face melts when he turns and there’s a figure looming at the door to the stairwell, backlit in too-white fluorescents.

“Boys,” Snoke says. “Up to no good.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

The following week, Hux receives a phone call from an unknown number. It is ungodly early—still dark outside, Tuesday morning sun just beginning to bleed between the feet of buildings—but Hux is awake, curled in his chair with his legs pulled up to his chest, a mug of lukewarm tea in his hands. He has not been sleeping well, not since the party, as if that strange thumping music burrowed its way into his bones and refuses to let him rest. He sets the tea down, scrubs a palm across his stubbled jaw (it’s been—two? three?—days since he shaved) and answers.

“Hux,” he says, his voice raspy with lack of sleep.

“Hey, are you busy today?” A vaguely familiar tone, a weird accent. Street noise in the background. “Like, later, like are you booked up.”

“Who the _fuck_ is this?” He knows, of course, because it wouldn’t be anyone else, because no one else would be so goddamned unprofessional as to call before the crack of dawn.

“Um. It’s, uh, it’s Kylo? Kylo Ren.” Hux groans, lets his head loll against the back of the chair. “You really didn’t know it was—”

“Why in God’s name are you calling me? At—” He checks the phone’s display for the time. “—at 5:30 in the bloody morning?”

“I was awake. Figured you would be too.” Hux can picture Ren’s stupid shrug, the lopsided smirk that would creep across his lopsided face. When he says dumb things, presumptuous things, Ren has a way of looking annoyingly young and boyish. Hux suspects he uses this to his advantage to get what he wants—innocent photographers bent over makeup tables, for example. “I need pictures. Well, Snoke says I need pictures. So.”

“Typically clients book with me several months in advance. Not the day of.” He stretches an arm out, bones popping as he does. Stress.

“So you’re booked. Huh.” A car horn screaming past. “ _Fuck you!_ Piece of shit nearly just hit me.”

“We should be so lucky,” Hux mutters.

“Snoke said you might have an opening. But I guess I’ll tell him you’re busy.”

On his schedule: monthly phone call to his father at noon, drinks with Phasma at 8:00. Maybe a walk in the afternoon, though that’ll result in freckles on his face and forearms. Perhaps not. “Possibly I could try to cancel one of my bookings, but—there’d be an increased fee, of course, I’m not going to do this out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Wow,” Ren says, “you have a heart.”

“Unfortunately. Should I try and clear a space for you?”

“Send Snoke the bill,” Ren says.

Hux rolls his eyes, but mentally thanks Snoke for financing the new Tom Ford blazer he’s been eyeing. “Text me so I can give you the address. Not from your fucking burner phone or whatever this is. Your actual number. And don’t ever call me this early again. Ever.”

Ren starts to say something, but Hux ends the call, punches the button with his thumb until he’s sure he won’t have to hear Ren’s voice again. His tea’s gone completely cold now.

As he’s microwaving his tea hot again (what would his father think?) his phone chimes. A California area code, unfamiliar number. No message, just a poorly lit photo of Ren—a selfie, the sun behind his head, shadows falling across his face—with a blank expression, giving the camera a middle finger.

 

* * *

 

Hux becomes oddly self-conscious about the state of his apartment when Ren texts _buzz me in asshole_ from the street. The apartment isn’t messy—Hux is not a messy person—but he’s suddenly possessed by the idea that it won’t be _enough_ for Ren, that it ought to be cleaner and sharper and less lived-in, so that Ren will see it and know that it is not to be fucked up. He obsesses over the morning’s mug of tea in the sink, the dogeared Eugenides on the corner table, the half-dead aloe vera plant on the windowsill, the Polaroid camera set next to the bowl of oranges. Is it revealing too much of himself to leave these things lying about? Is he providing Ren with new ammunition to irritate him?

He’s never worried about such things before, never once, despite all the models and luminaries and beautiful people who have climbed the stairs to his home studio. But he’s never fucked any of them, either, except Ren. Maybe, then, he shouldn’t be so anxious about this, but that doesn’t stop him from clenching his palms into fists, digging his nails into the heels of his hands, when he hears Ren fussing with the doorknob. A muffled _what the hell_ from the hallway.

“You have to wait for me to open it!” Hux calls. _Idiot_. He peers through the peephole, and sure enough, there is Ren, nose looking even bigger in the fisheye lens. He unlocks the deadbolt, swings the door open. Ren shoves his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants and stares at his discount-store shoes. “My _lord_ , have a little patience,” says Hux.

“They didn’t teach me that at boarding school,” Ren shrugs, then elbows his way in. “Cute place.”

Hux locks the door behind them. Hopes that doesn’t give off the wrong impression, like this is some kind of booty call. “Did you bring something to change into?” he asks, surveying Ren’s outfit. Stained, ratty sweatpants, oversized t-shirt, the ugly shoes.

“Nope,” Ren says, making his way to the chair, rearranging the room as he passes through. He nudges the coffee table out of his way, steps over a pair of oxfords left in front of the chair. He stops to stare out the window, adjusting the sad aloe vera plant’s pot. For a moment, his face is illuminated so beautifully, flooded with natural light so thick and golden Hux swears he can taste it, and it sends Hux scrambling for his camera. He fumbles with the lens cap, the focus—but then Ren turns, saying, “You know you still have to water these, right?” and the moment is lost.

_Damn it_. That had been the first thing his father had taught him: always have your camera ready. Always be prepared. He lowers the camera. Ren is staring at him.

“Were you taking a picture of me?”

“You moved,” Hux says.

“I can move back if you think it’s good.” Ren poses himself similar to how he had been standing, but the feel is wrong—his hand is too heavy on the potted plant, he’s focusing too intently on whatever is outside, his mouth is set differently. Maybe there’s a cloud now, too, because the light is wrong. Too thin, too dark.

Hux shakes his head. He could move Ren into the right position, but even then it wouldn’t be right. No life in the photo, none of the spontaneity that would have made it magical in the first place. “You need different clothes,” Hux says. “I doubt Snoke wants you photographed in those.”

Ren screws up his face, tugs at the hem of his shirt. “He said you’d make me look good.”

“I’m not a miracle worker.” Hux exhales. He supposes he should have expected this, or something like it—Ren never makes things easy. “Nothing I have is going to fit you.”

Ren snorts. “If you wanna see me naked, all you have to do is ask.”

Heat rushes to Hux’s cheeks; he grips his camera tight. “I just mean—what you have on now, the silhouette won’t photograph well, it does _nothing_ for you—”

And then Ren laughs, that nervous, choked laugh that’s as strange as the rest of him. He pulls a hand through his hair—it sticks out in places, frizzes in others—and grins, showing crooked teeth, the deep lines of his face suddenly appearing. “I thought you liked jokes,” Ren says.

“I don’t like your jokes.” Hux sets his camera down on the kitchen counter, leans against the cabinets. “Mostly because I can never tell if you’re joking.”

“I’m pretty much never serious,” Ren says. He flops back into Hux’s chair, his arms and legs sprawling on all sides, too big to be contained. The chair squeaks as he shifts positions, and he picks up the Eugenides, thumbs through it. Doesn’t seem interested.

“Except when you asked if I wanted to fuck you?” Hux’s upper lip curls; he crosses his arms over his chest.

Ren glances up for half a second, sets the book back down, regards Hux again. “Well. You know. Can you blame me?”

For once, Hux supposes, Ren is being genuine. His eyes are wide, a peculiar amber in this light, and he’s gnawing the inside of his bottom lip. That irritating boyishness. He has no sense of how much space he takes up, the size of his body, the shapes and shadows he makes. The way he catches light. Ren gets a sort of cow-eyed look, too innocent for his own good, sometimes. There’s something about him that seems unspoiled, despite the fact that Hux himself had spoiled Ren, left Ren sweating and gasping, all that weight on top of Hux, his big body like a blanket. A thought of pinning Ren to the chair darts through Hux’s mind—he could easily drop himself into Ren’s lap (Ren’s bottom lip would tremble, the way it had when he’d asked for instructions that day in the studio) and find the lube in the drawer of the end table, work his palm into those sweatpants and stroke Ren off, the satisfaction of holding Ren in his hand again more than enough.

Hux shakes his head. Ren is still looking at him. “Let’s take some pictures,” Hux says, drawing his fingers across his freshly shaved jaw. His skin is hot, thinking of Ren wanting to fuck him. Hopes he hasn’t gone red, the way he used to as a kid, caught meddling with his father’s cameras.

“You want me to wear this?”

“God, no. Take your shirt off; I’ll find something.” Then, after a moment’s thought: “And those terrible shoes, too!”

Ren doesn’t move yet, but Hux feels his eyes on him as he enters his bedroom, searches his closet.

Four years—that’s how long it’s been since he had someone in his bed, excepting the time Phasma fell asleep here next to him after the two of them had had too much to drink. He’s been busy, and he hasn’t exactly had time to dwell on his solitude. His days have been spent behind his camera, and until now—until _Ren_ —he’s been satisfied with that, with the constant revolving door of people moving in and out of his life. But Ren had wanted him for a moment, and he had wanted whatever Ren was offering.

Pathetic, that he could be brought down by the dopey-looking boy still staring at him from the main room. He picks through his closet, desperate for something to dress Ren in. All his clothes are carefully fitted to his body, to make him appear slimmer and taller. Ren, on the other hand, is broad, rounded where Hux is angled. Wouldn’t know a well-tailored outfit if Michael Kors presented it to him personally.

Hux shoves through hanger after hanger of Armani jackets and Cavalli shirts to a section of sweaters at the back of the closet, hidden away for the approaching summer. There—an oversized Gaultier sweater from a few seasons ago. The sweater had swallowed Hux up, but it might fit Ren nicely. He slips it off the hanger, careful not to stretch the cashmere, and holds it to his chest.

Ren is standing in the main room, barefoot but still wearing his shirt, when Hux re-enters. He’s looking at Hux blankly, fingering the hem of his shirt. “Do I have to take that off of you myself? Come on,” Hux says.

“Maybe you should,” Ren says. Drops his hands to his sides. Goes still. His lips press together into an inviting curve; he splays his fingers over his thighs, wide.

“You are possibly the most incompetent person I’ve ever met,” Hux says, gently placing the sweater on the low table between them. He advances slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, afraid it might suddenly snap at him. But Ren remains still, his only movement the soft smile creeping across his lips, tugging at his cheeks. Hux settles in front of him, probably closer than is entirely necessary. A faint scent of adolescent cologne, too sweet. “Arms up.”

Ren raises his arms, a child following instructions, revealing a thin sliver of pale skin, a suggestion of a trail of dark hair down his stomach. “You still fucked me,” Ren says, as Hux is getting his fingers around the bottom of the shirt. His breath tickles at Hux’s ear; if he were to look up, their mouths might brush—Hux might let them brush.

“Technically, _you_ fucked _me,_ ” Hux says. His knuckles skim up Ren’s sides as he lifts the shirt, the sudden skin-on-skin like the pop of a flashbulb. The pliant flesh of Ren’s stomach gives way to hard rib bones, each ridge passing under Hux’s hand, and the ribcage gives way to muscle—pectoral, triceps, flexor, all pulled taut.

“I’m not sure that makes it any better,” Ren says, the words muffled as Hux yanks the shirt over his head.

Hux, the shirt balled in his hands, backs away and allows himself to look at Ren’s newly bare torso. In this light his skin is so pale, as if it has never been exposed to the sun before, and his chest and stomach are speckled with dark moles. Hux takes a mental inventory of their positions—on Ren’s sternum, at his navel, buried in the deep cuts of his abdominal muscles. Perhaps that’s what strikes Hux the most, at first—Ren’s effortlessly defined muscles, which at once appear soft and powerful. He thinks of spanning one of Ren’s pectorals with his palm, his thumb glancing, teasing, at Ren’s pert pink nipple. Would Ren twitch under the touch, or would he remain still? And could Hux draw his tongue across Ren’s sharp collarbones? Would Ren let him?

At the space where Ren’s neck meets his shoulder, there’s a flash of black ink. When Ren moves his arms to cover himself—which he does, quickly, as if weighed down by Hux’s gaze—Hux sees that the ink spills down the backs of his biceps, down nearly to his elbows. The tattoo is all delicate black lines, thin and impossibly detailed, in a pattern Hux can’t quite make out. And at the base of Ren’s ribcage, following the curve of those bones, there’s blurred black lettering in a faux-Old English font.

“What’s all that?” Hux says, jabbing a finger vaguely in the direction of the tattoos. Ren is running his palms over his biceps, like he’s trying to scrub away the ink. They must have been a rash teenage decision, Hux figures, but he still wants to see them.

“It’s, um. I have some tattoos,” Ren says. He’s biting his lower lip, the pressure turning pink to red.

“Well, yes, obviously, but—let me see.” Hux deposits the shirt on the couch, steps forward again. Places his fingers just below the words at Ren’s ribcage. Ren jolts at the touch, but quickly settles, and Hux feels his deep, full breaths, his lungs expanding and contracting. “Is this Latin?”

“Yeah.”

“ _You_ know Latin?” _Offensus sum defectu fidei tuo_. Hux scours his mind for any remnants of the Latin he supposedly learned in sixth form, but all he can manage is _fidei_ , the genitive of _fides_ —faith.

Ren shrugs. “It’s something my grandpa used to say, I dunno.”

Hux presses his thumb over the ornate blackletter _O_ , feels the bone underneath. It must have hurt very much—needles pounding the thin skin, no real muscle there to cushion against the pain. “Did you cry?” Hux smirks, drawing his thumb over the rest of the letters. Ren squirms a little against Hux’s fingertips, not quite leaning into the touch.

“No,” Ren scoffs. “You get kind of an adrenaline rush.”

“Hmm,” Hux says, and he gently turns Ren so Ren’s back is before him. Though Hux barely moves him—more a suggestion than an actual command—Ren turns easily, gives easily.

Then the tattoo on Ren’s arms becomes clear. It sprawls from his biceps to his shoulder blades, each line crisp and clean. The detailing is impeccable, the shading such that the tattoo appears to jump from Ren’s skin, as if it were three-dimensional. The previously indecipherable pattern: feathers, each one inked carefully and precisely to form a beautiful set of black wings on Ren’s back. Hux hears himself sighing at the sight before he can stop himself.

“It’s kind of dumb,” Ren mutters. “Fucking expensive.”

Hux wants so badly to follow each line with his fingertip, trace the curves of each feather, feel Ren’s bones shifting under his hand. But the light, the light—the square of sunshine pouring in through the window hits Ren’s body such that half his back is cast in shadow. “Hold still,” Hux says, “just for a second.”

Ren stays in that position, his arms crossed over his chest, while Hux retrieves his camera from the kitchen. He notes the flex of Ren’s muscles under his skin, the unconscious movement like wind fluttering the tips of the feathers on his back. Hux adjusts the zoom, the aperture, brings the viewfinder to his eye.

Framed in the rectangle: Ren’s upper body, from the small of his back to the crown of his head, in shades of black and white against the pale blue of Hux’s living room wall. The dark curls of his hair stand stark against his opalescent skin. With his arms crossed, the wings appear slightly lifted, preparing for flight, and Ren’s spine—unmarked by ink—is a wall between light and dark. No flash, just natural light. The shutter snaps.

“Raise your arms a bit. Elbows out, wrist against your forehead.” Ren complies wordlessly, his movements inelegant and unpracticed. The wings spread, stretch. “That’s good, just like that.” Click. Click. Click.

Ren follows direction so well, without complaint or question, as though he craves it, needs it. He had asked for direction in the studio, too, when he was slick with coconut oil and begging for Hux. This is something Hux can give, is good at giving. He thinks he hears Ren sigh when he says, “Extend your fingers—good, hold that pose. Very good.” He snaps a few more photos of Ren’s back with the wings outstretched, the curves of Ren’s muscles taking on a sculpted look in this light.

“Face me,” Hux says, and Ren turns back toward him. Hux lowers the camera for a moment. Ren still has his arms at his forehead, but his gaze drifts toward the window, a sort of dazed, wondrous look glimmering in his eyes. His mouth twitches; he swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs. Hux has the sudden urge to press his lips to one of the moles at Ren’s throat, maybe to suck a bruise there, break the skin. He snaps a photo—Ren’s brilliant profile, soft curves, aquiline nose, dark lashes, round ear obscured by round curls.

Ren jerks around at the sound of the shutter clicking. “I wasn’t ready,” he says, letting his arms drop. “You should really water your plant.”

“Your face gets very stiff when you know you’re being photographed,” Hux says. He steps forward toward Ren now, who tenses. “I like my photos to look natural.”

“Should I put on that sweater,” Ren asks. Hux is reaching up to Ren’s face, momentarily obsessed by the seashell of Ren’s ear. His fingertips skim Ren’s cheek, and Ren’s eyelashes flutter—they’re so long, so full, and when they’re cast down against Ren’s cheek, Hux understands why people choose to photograph in black and white. He tucks the loose curl of Ren’s hair behind his ear, middle finger grazing Ren’s earlobe.

“No sweater. Just like this will be best,” Hux says. He lets his fingertips stray across Ren’s smooth jaw as he pulls back. “Come sit on the floor.”

Ren does as commanded, moving slowly to the empty space of hardwood in front of the blank blue wall. Hux has decorated the other walls of his apartment with various pieces of art—framed posters from Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman exhibitions, one of his father’s original silver gelatin prints—but this one he has intentionally left bare, to serve as a backdrop in these intimate photo sessions. Ren lowers himself to the floor, his big body landing with a gentle thump. He leans back against the wall, stares at the ceiling for a moment, his shoulders uneven, his stomach soft. Click.

Again, Ren seems to be startled by the sound of the shutter firing. “Stop doing that,” Hux says.

“Usually photographers tell me how to pose,” Ren says.

“They don’t pose you very well,” Hux says. He snaps a picture of Ren looking disgruntled, his lips pursed. “Don’t squinch your face up; you’re meant to look pretty in these.”

Ren’s face relaxes. “You think I look pretty?” he says, and he grins from the side of his mouth, all teeth and soft lines.

“You’re a model, aren’t you? That’s your job.” Ren turns his head slightly, almost laughing, and the curve of his ear is visible in the photo, its snail shell spiral elegant and smooth against the unruly thicket of Ren’s hair. He frames Ren in profile again, lots of negative space, the blue wall behind him. He looks like a sea creature, something born from the water.

“A lot of models look fucking weird,” Ren says, rolling his shoulders back. He draws his knees to his chest, wraps his veined forearms around his calves. He is a crush of angles (snap), he is muscle and bone (snap), he is grayscale save his toasted-almond eyes (zoom, focus, snap).

“Well, perhaps you’ve answered your own question.”

Ren raises his eyebrows. “You probably want me to shut up, huh.”

“Actually,” Hux says, lowering the camera, “talking seems to keep you loose, so for once I’d prefer you to keep talking. Tilt your chin up a bit.”

“Huh,” Ren says, and he complies. He seems to suddenly become aware of the camera, though, and he can’t keep his eyes off it, subconsciously arranging himself to be more palatable, more easily consumed. Some kind of defense mechanism. He spreads his legs a bit, stretches them out, leans against the wall so the full slope of his torso is visible. That trail of dark hair dusted low on his belly, disappearing beneath the elastic band of his sweatpants—Hux zooms in carefully, knows he will not give these photos to Ren. Thatch of hair, round mole, skin pale and paler. He focuses and frames as if he were shooting landscapes, capturing instead the natural topography of Ren’s body, the ink graffitied on the white cliffs of his chest.

And Ren has gone silent. “Speak,” Hux says. “Let’s have a conversation.”

“Um. I mean, with the camera, it’s just sort of—”

Hux groans. “God, are you always so— _disagreeable_?” He drops himself to the floor across from Ren, the camera in his lap. “Here. No camera. Speak.”

Ren’s bare feet are close to Hux’s, his toes curling against the hardwood. “Okay,” Ren says, and pauses. He stares down for a moment, crosses his arms over his chest again. “Why are you such a dick to me?”

“I wasn’t aware that I was,” Hux says, snorting.

“Yeah, you are. I mean, it’s fine, it’s kind of refreshing, considering people are usually blowing smoke up my ass, but. I’m just wondering what your deal is.” He passes a hand through his hair, the tucked strands falling from behind his ear. Hux takes a little pleasure in how quickly Ren replaces the fallen hair, thinking of how Ren’s soft round earlobe would taste between his teeth.

Hux leans back on his palms. “Well,” he says, “where to begin? When you came into the _ORDER_ shoot you were unforgivably rude, and late, and then you threw a hissy fit, because you’re a child, so I suppose I hold a bit of a grudge about that.”

Ren shrugs. “Fair enough. I had shit going on, though, so I was kind of pissed off.”

“And then there was the incident of you insisting I wanted to fuck you, which I did not, at the time, and then my having to guide you through the steps of how to—do _that_ , like you’d never done it before, and _then_ you left me alone in that godforsaken studio to clean up _your_ mess!” Hux throws his hands into the air. “And you kissed me at that awful party which, frankly, I still fail to understand.”

“You kissed me too. Afterward.” Ren draws his tongue across his bottom lip now, as if remembering the taste. “Guess you were trying to teach me that, too.”

“You’re a terrible kisser,” Hux says. He drums his fingers against the top of the camera, waiting for the right moment to shoot again.

Ren grins. “We should practice.”

“God, are you fifteen years old?” Hux groans aloud, and Ren laughs and laughs. “ _That’s_ why I’m such a prick to you.”

“I wasn’t this smooth at fifteen,” Ren says. “I was pretty fucking awkward.”

“So nothing’s changed, then,” Hux says, smirking. “Do elaborate.”

“Uh, well. Fifteen was pretty weird for me, um. I was going between my mom and dad a lot because they were, like, kind of having trouble. So my mom was in L.A. and my dad was in—he was somewhere different every time I went to see him. And my mom was starting to get really busy with her environment stuff so I got sent to my uncle’s a lot. He fucking hates me, so, it was kind of, you know, weird.”

“Weird?” Hux says. He gets his fingers around the camera, turns it back on.

“Yeah, I mean, he was just really overly, like, concerned about me. Worried, I guess. So we fought a lot, and my parents weren’t, uh, parenting. Anyway, I was an asshole back then. And I had a bowl cut so I looked really stupid. My little cousin would call me Dumbo because my ears stuck out.”

Ren’s fingers drift unconsciously to his exposed ear as he turns his head just slightly, stares at the floor again. That’s when Hux lifts the camera, shifts onto his knees, and snaps a photo. Ren, eyes downcast, almost frowning, his fingers square, his ear curved, his jaw soft. Hux snaps two or three variations of the photo before Ren gives in, stares at the camera again.

“You don’t like your ears,” Hux says, his face obscured by the camera. Through the viewfinder, he watches Ren’s brow furrow, his eyes focus on the camera lens. Again, it’s a way of protecting himself, not allowing himself to be truly seen. Still, the gaze is almost too much to bear.

“Not really,” Ren says, very quietly. The long lens of the camera is reflected in the glass of Ren’s eyes. “They’re pretty big.”

“Talk to me, not the camera. Watch my mouth.” He taps his bottom lip with a fingertip and Ren’s eyes shift minutely. “I think your ears give your face personality.”

“I think my face gives my face personality,” Ren says. Hux bites his lip, relieved to no longer have Ren’s eyes on him.

“Turn toward the window. Your whole body; I want all that light on you. And stretch your legs out a bit.”

“You’re bossy,” Ren says, following the directions he’s been given. He squints against the sudden light. The thick black tattoos are even starker on his skin now, along with the moles and the hair on his stomach. But it isn’t quite right, the silhouette is bulky—the sweatpants.

“Can you take those off?” Hux gestures toward the sweatpants. “Or do you have on stupid boxers again?”

Ren’s mouth twitches. “I can’t tell if you’re serious,” he says, setting his thumbs at the waistband of the pants.

“I don’t want to fuck you, I just—the pictures will look better with your legs bare. It’s more vulnerable.”

He suddenly shucks the pants down his legs, kicks them across the room. Plain black boxers. Hux silently thanks whatever deity has blessed him. “It would be okay if you did want to fuck me,” Ren says. He scratches at his side, over the Latin etched on his ribs.

Hux thinks of digging his nails in there, of lowering himself into Ren’s lap here on the floor and rutting against him. Ren would throw his head all the way back, and Hux would lick a long wet line from sternum to throat. Ren would want him desperately, yes, Ren would beg and slick his palm with spit and shove his hand down Hux’s trousers—Hux can hear himself now saying _the bed, the bed, fucking hell, Ren_ —and they wouldn’t even make it to the bed because they’d be here, and when Ren fell back against the floor, his skin smooth with sweat, Hux would reach for his camera (still sitting on Ren’s lap, Ren’s hands still at work) and frame: damp hair, jawline, ear, the curve of neck into shoulder, collarbone, polished floorboards beneath. Hux gasping, _look at me, look at me, please_ , and catching Ren’s lips, leading him, teaching.

“We’ll see,” Hux says. “Sit however’s most comfortable for you.”

Ren rearranges himself again, one leg flat against the floor, the other bent at the knee. He rests on one palm, his body an obtuse angle. There’s a tattoo on the back of his calf, Hux realizes now—something geometric, a pair of intersecting triangles. The photo Hux takes resembles an abstract expressionist painting: the right angle of Ren’s bent leg, the dark lines of the tattoo, the curves of his muscular calf. In Ren’s natural grayscale, it would look good on a gallery wall.

“Most of the models I know are obsessed with how they look,” Hux says, checking a setting on the camera. “But you aren’t.”

“I guess not. I mean, I work out.”

“But you hate your ears. And your face, too, I suspect. Look at me, not the camera.” Zoom on Ren’s face, his heavy-lidded eyes, his lower lip, which he has sucked into his mouth.

“You’re not my shrink,” Ren says. His brow furrows again; he brings his knuckles to his lips.

“You have a shrink,” Hux says. “Interesting.”

“You don’t grow up like I did without having, uh, several shrinks.” Hux scoots back a little further, gets more of Ren’s body in the frame. His whole torso now, the wing on Ren’s bicep wrapped around him almost protectively, the skin over his ribs and belly stretched tight, everything in shades of white and black and the delicious, delicate brown of Ren’s eyes. “Do you do this to everyone you photograph?”

_Of course not, you idiot_. They don’t pop on camera like Ren does; their lines are wrong, and Ren’s are right in their imperfection, their imbalance. Ren makes Hux want to shoot on film—he hasn’t in years, it’s too expensive, but Ren would be worth the expense. The chance of wasting all the film on shots of Ren’s face. That would be worth it, just to make this permanent. Digital, he can erase (he won’t, but he could) but film—he’d have prints made, chromogenic and silver gelatin, wall-size, so big you’d lose yourself in every detail of Ren’s face, counting his pores or his eyelashes or the creases in his lips. A gallery, a museum, a hundred photos of Ren, not like the ones in the magazine or these, even, but better, with Ren open and vulnerable and scared and _his_. Hux thinks of being with Phasma at the opening, taking her hand after everyone else has gone, and walking her through the corridors. _Look at him_ , he’d say, _look what I made of him_.

“I find you very curious, Ren,” Hux says. “You confound me, but I’ve never taken such good pictures of anyone.”

“You can call me Kylo. That’s my name.”

Hux has stepped back far enough now to capture Ren’s whole body in one photo. God, it’s something special; he’s so strangely proportioned and so large that he seems to press at the edges of the frame, barely contained. “I think I’ll stick to Ren, thanks,” Hux says. “Do your parents know you’re gay?”

Ren turns his head violently, like a trapped animal, arms wrapped round himself in a tight embrace. “I’m—I’m not gay,” he stammers. His fingers press hard into his arms, red blooming beneath the black wings.

“Right, well, do your parents know you fuck boys, then,” Hux says. Ren’s body is tensing, his knees drawing up toward his chest. Hux steadies the camera, prepares to shoot— _don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up_.

“My parents don’t know anything about me,” Ren says, “and neither do you.” And now, defenseless, pleading, he looks straight into the camera, almost through it, with his wounded-deer eyes, and Hux shoots.

Perfect.

“That’s good,” Hux says, “we’re done.”

Ren exhales a shaky breath, lets his arms drop to the floor again. “Fuck,” Ren says, and he scrubs his hands across his face.

“You did well,” Hux says. He hears Ren sigh at that, and Hux wonders briefly how Ren would respond to further praise—about the unique shape of his nose, for instance, or how his body reflects light.

“Can I see that last picture?” Ren says, his voice still full of breath.

“It isn’t edited,” Hux says.

“Yeah, I know, let me see it.” Ren grabs for the camera, not bothering to get up from the ground. Hux stays just out of reach for a moment, pulling the photo up on the camera’s display. It’s a good picture, the best he could have hoped for—Ren looking at once angry and fearful, a boy in a man’s body, all strange-faced and wonderful. Hux lingers on the photo for a moment before squatting down next to Ren and giving over the camera.

Their fingers brush when Ren takes it from him. Hux feels as though he’s blistered his fingertips on an open flame. He brings his fingers to his lips while Ren looks at the photo. He doesn’t often observe others consuming his work—it’s anxiety-inducing, makes him squirm. But he knows this photo is good, and there’s a voyeuristic pleasure in letting Ren see what he had seen. _I made you—_

A phone’s tinny chime, a vibration in Hux’s back pocket. He retrieves the phone and BRENDOL glares at the top of the screen, the phone still buzzing in his palm. “Shit, sorry, I’ve got to take this.” He leaves the camera with Ren, keeps a careful eye on him to be sure he doesn’t break it. “Hey, Dad.”

Ren glances up at him upon hearing that. “Brendol,” says the voice crackling through the speaker, “hope you aren’t busy.”

“I am, actually, um, I’m just finishing up a shoot for a—a friend.” He stumbles over that word, and Ren smirks. Worry begins to knot Hux’s stomach—conversations with his father have a way of escalating into arguments, and with Ren here watching him, Hux feels even more anxious than usual about what’s to come.

“Better not be pro bono,” Brendol says.

“No, I don’t take jobs for free anymore, I don’t have to do that.” Hux wanders into the kitchen and props himself against the counter. “Well, except for your friend Snoke, apparently, since you insist I owe him.” He chooses not to mention how Snoke is bankrolling this shoot.

“You know Francis is entirely responsible for your being able to relocate to New York. You _do_ owe him; don’t be ridiculous.” 

Ren is watching him carefully, no doubt trying to eavesdrop on the conversation. He stands, unfolding his limbs from underneath him like an animal, and starts to dress himself. Hux can’t help but observe the movement of his body, how he nearly falls when trying to put on the sweatpants again. Hux stifles a laugh. “By this point, I wish you’d give me a little credit. I know you don’t think so but I really am quite accomplished.”

“Oh, for God’s sake—are you doing this _again_? You’re wasting your talent—”

Something snaps. “—Yes, I am doing it again, because you’re constantly disrespecting me because I didn’t want to—”

“—fashion photography, please, you’d have won a hundred awards by now if you were taking real photos—“

“I _am_ taking real photos! I take beautiful photos and everyone but you seems to think so since I’m in magazines and ads and fucking _billboards_ , alright, there’s a fucking Valentino billboard in Times Square and I took that picture!” He realizes now that he’s shouting, his voice gone raw, and that his hand is clenched into a fist, that he’s digging his nails into his palms until that pain is all he feels. Ren is staring at him from across the room. He’s heard everything. _Fuck._

A silence on the line. “Are you done?”

“Yes,” Hux breathes.

“Don’t swear at me again, Brendol.”

“I’m sorry.” Ren is crossing the room now, yanking a chair out from the kitchen table and perching on the back of it, his feet in the seat, like some oversized bird.

“Your pictures are good, but—if you were to focus on something more serious, I have no doubt you would receive international acclaim. You’re limiting yourself, you always have.”

“I’m doing what I like. What I’m good at.”

Brendol scoffs. “Anyone can take pictures of clothes.”

“I take pictures of—of beautiful things, Dad. I make things beautiful.” He tries not to glance at Ren, who’s fiddling with the Polaroid camera on the table, pointing it at himself and grinning. The flash, and Ren jerks at the sudden blinding light, and the camera spits out a square photo, still grey, slowly developing. Hux waves a hand at him, but of course he doesn’t stop. “You don’t understand that because you’re so obsessed with showing what’s ugly, but I’m just no good at that. I want to take beautiful pictures, that’s it.”

“Beautiful pictures are two a penny.”

“Well, people pay me a lot more than that.” Ren is turning the camera toward Hux now.

“You’ll see it my way eventually.”

“Smile!” Ren suddenly says, and the camera flashes too bright in Hux’s face.

“I’m going to murder you,” Hux hisses, covering the phone with his hand. Ren retrieves the photo as it’s printed, shakes it to speed its development. “How’s Gran?”

“Oh, she’s still hanging on, the old bat. Can’t remember a damned thing, but I suppose we can’t very well euthanize her.”

“Suppose not. Send her my love.” He takes the photo of Ren from Ren’s fingers. The colors haven’t quite fully come in yet, but it’s clear enough that Hux can see the stupid face Ren is pulling, all his crooked teeth showing, smile lines carved into his cheeks. “I’ve really got to go, Dad, I’m in a bit of a time crunch.”

“Be kind to Francis. He’s done more for you than you realize.”

“I’ll try,” Hux says, and ends the call. “Can you not be a fucking arsehole when I’m on the phone?”

Ren shrugs. “Your dad sounds like a dick.”

Hux sighs. “Don’t waste my film like this unless you want to buy me more.”

“Isn’t he, like, kind of famous? And I didn’t waste it. This is gonna be a cute picture of you.” Ren wiggles the photo in Hux’s face, who smacks it out of the way.

“Yes, he is, _like, kind of famous_. Eavesdropping is very rude, you know.”

“My parents were the same way, like, they were pretty pissed when I didn’t just wanna be their little clone.”

Hux thinks of pressing the subject—Ren’s allusions to his parentage have piqued his curiosity. But he won’t push it now, not yet. He’s pushed Ren enough today. “I’ll get to work editing those pictures,” he says. “I’ll send them to you and Snoke as soon as I’m done.”

“Guess that’s my cue to go,” Ren says, climbing down from the chair. He shoves the photo of Hux into his pocket, and Hux is half-thankful he doesn’t get to see how bad it is. “Put that picture on your fridge. A Kylo Ren original.”

“I will,” Hux says. Rolls his eyes. Ren lingers too long standing before moving to the door, fumbling with the lock and finally exiting. Hux listens to him thump down the stairs until the sound disappears.

He holds the Polaroid between his fingers, watching the colors adjust themselves, Ren coming into focus. It’s slightly washed-out, overexposed, but soft at the edges, and warm. Nice to look at. So, for a long moment, he looks at it (Ren’s dumb smile, the flares of light in his hair, his eyes squeezed tight), and then he slips it beneath a Tate Modern magnet on the side of the refrigerator.


	4. Chapter 4

The Polaroid on the fridge door starts to torment Hux after about a week. It doesn’t quite fit there, next to the to-do list ( _Balmain shoot concept?_ written in heavy black ballpoint, crossed through upon receiving Snoke’s message that he would have a concept on the day of the shoot) and the Con Ed bill. Ren’s smile, squint, stupid face—they’re distracting, so he removes the photo and shoves it under the Herman Koch novel on his bedside table.

Which, in retrospect, he realizes now, was a fucking stupid idea. It’s somewhere past midnight and he’s awoken with a hunger, a want gnawing at his neck and chest. He’s dreamt of Ren again— _fuck’s sake_ —and he’s half-hard, sweaty. That’s new—that hasn’t happened since he was a teenager. Jesus. Fucking Ren. He turns over onto his side, facing away from the table and the offensive photo, and curls into himself, tries to sleep.

The ache between his thighs, in the pit of his stomach, is unignorable. Even just his thin sheets and worn blanket are too much—he can hardly bear the warmth of them, never mind the brush of the fabric against his skin. Hux kicks the sheets down, exposes his legs to the cool early-summer air breezing through the open window. But the tickle of wind over the fine hairs on his thighs and calves makes him shiver, because he thinks, unbidden, of Ren’s fingertips slipping up from knee to hip.

He groans, shoves his face into his pillow. It’s not enough that Ren annoy him in real life, no, now Ren has invaded his dreams, too. And now his body, so desperate for touch, Ren’s touch—his cock presses against his briefs, begging, and Hux hates himself for it.

Even now, only moments after waking, the details of the dream begin to crumble. He has never been good at remembering these sorts of things, but he tries to reconstruct it, despite himself.

When he was taking photos of Ren, before Ren had even undressed—Ren had paused for a moment, his fingers at the corner of Hux’s dying aloe vera plant, and the light had been beautiful. The dream was all light, that long moment stretched and stretched. In this version, Hux is swift at fetching his camera—or maybe he _is_ the camera—and he takes a hundred photos of Ren in that light, looking delicate and breakable. And Ren was dressed, but suddenly his pale body is wrapped in honeyed light and nothing else, and (finally giving in now, drawing his hands down his stomach, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of his briefs) _oh,_ Hux wants to taste the light, Ren’s moles, the smile that tugs at the corners of Ren’s mouth. Ren’s face is close, _fuck_ (he pushes the briefs down his thighs), Ren kisses him, kisses him, kisses him. Not messy, not hungry, not like on the roof at that shitty club—no, like he’s practiced, like he’s learned, like Hux taught him.

And then they are on the couch, and Ren has undressed Hux without Hux even realizing it. Somehow there is room for both of them. Ren sprawls, still smiling, _God_ , his legs splayed wide, cock hard against his belly. His chest is flushed pink and _Jesus fuck_ (shoulder blades bending back, a gasp for breath) Hux thinks of devouring him, this beautiful boy laid out for the taking. A camera again, Hux focuses on the angle of his hips turned to the fluid curve of his cock and balls, all Ren’s softest parts. _Touch yourself,_ Hux says (in the dream, aloud, either, both) and Ren complies, big hand on big cock, moving just for Hux. Then Hux is touching himself, too, imagining even in the dream and even now that it’s Ren’s hands on him.

A thousand images of Ren, like Polaroids developing in his head: Ren’s cock spilling onto his knuckles, Ren between Hux’s legs, Hux’s legs hooked over Ren’s shoulders, Ren’s lips and mouth and tongue and _oh God Ren Ren Ren_ that tongue inside him, Ren’s nose nudging against the soft untouched skin behind his balls, Ren’s fingers pushing him open, slick and wet and (clamoring for the lube in the drawer, spilling it on himself, hands shaking) _there_ , Hux fucking himself on Ren’s fingers, Ren still smiling and Ren asking if it’s good and Hux saying, practically sobbing, _yes, yes, God_. Stupid smile, stupid squinted eyes, _fuck me_ , Hux says, _Ren, please_ , and _fuck_ Ren is in him, and they’re in bed now, and the mattress shifts with every one of Ren’s thrusts, _harder_ (slick hand slipping across the table, uncovering the photo, straining to see the smile). Hux rolls his hips against Ren and it’s not enough, it’s not enough at all, _touch me_ , and Ren nods and gets a wide hand on Hux’s cock and grips tight, and Ren is grinning when the orgasm rocks him, when Hux’s whole body goes limp and loose, and the only word he can manage is _Ren, Ren_.

He’s left with a twinge in his lower back, panting as he comes, leaning up to see the photo on the table. Hux’s torso is wet with lube and come and sweat, throat raw from whimpering Ren’s name. The bed is empty, and he feels empty, too, when he finally slips his fingers from inside himself. He moans at the loss, still half-imagining they’re Ren’s cock (a poor imitation). “Fuck,” he murmurs, his muscles still clenching and unclenching, cock softening in his hand now.

It was only a dream. A fantasy, maybe, if he can admit that to himself. Just something to jerk off to, just something to tide him over until the next time he can get Ren behind him again. “Fuck,” he repeats, standing on wobbling legs, stepping out of his briefs. He makes his way to the bathroom quickly, the ache in his stomach, between his legs, not quite subsiding. _God_ —the problem with masturbating is the shame that comes afterward, in this moment, when cleaning come from one’s stomach with a cold washcloth. Had he really begged for Ren to fuck him? Moaned Ren’s name? Dreamt of Ren’s tongue in his ass?

Impossible. Impossible. He leaves the soiled washcloth in the sink—he’ll deal with it in the morning—and tries not to catch sight of himself in the mirror. Knows that, if he does, he’ll see all his skin still bright red, and his hair stuck up on all sides, and his bottom lip bitten nearly bloody. This was all easier—less embarrassing, anyway—when he wasn’t getting laid. Not that he’s really getting laid now. Fucking Ren.

He doesn’t bother putting on a new pair of briefs, just crawls into the still-sweaty sheets and pulls them up over himself. Covers his face with a pillow. Sort of hopes he’ll suffocate. 

* * *

Hux accidentally arrives at the _ORDER_ shoot half an hour early. Snoke has found them some abandoned warehouse in Chelsea to use as a set, and of course Hux budgets too much time between the subway ride and the walk from the station. He wanders in and the place is empty, probably full of asbestos, with a sort of mildew smell that reminds Hux of a particularly pathetic dog which used to skulk about in front of his apartment building. Not exactly the ideal place to shoot Balmain, but he supposes it’ll have to do.

He’s been thinking, mostly, of the photographs he’ll take—the specific details of the clothes, with their military insignias and lush fabrics. Despite himself, he’s excited to see Ren in the clothes. Those embroidered jackets, the velvet trousers, the leather riding gloves—they’ll flatter Ren, Hux thinks, make him look like some aristocratic Regency hero. No excessive makeup, just some highlighter on his cheeks, maybe something to darken his eyes.

But this set is just—well. Not something Hux would choose. It’s sort of cavernous, heavy wooden beams fallen here and there, and Hux is certain there are rats or homeless drifters with machetes or something worse lurking in its dark corners. There are, however, huge high windows, their panes of glass shattered or missing, that let in solid shards of light. The rectangles of light stretch across the warehouse floor, and Hux moves to stand in one of them. It’s warm and golden, so, so bright, spiderwebs and flurries of dust caught in the glow.

Maybe this will do. Sunlight drizzling through Ren’s hair, gleaming on the polished accents and buttons of the clothes. Hux turns his face up, closes his eyes, lets his hands rest at his camera bag. Feels that light swallow him.

Back home, in London, the days were grey and grey and grey, and there was so much rain and so much gloom that it seemed to consume him. He was young and he had been sad, sometimes, for reasons he couldn’t explain—he had money, and he had the privileges that come with being a Hux. The pressure of his father’s name, his mother gone his first year of university. Still, no reason to be so sad, so lost. On weekends, he would walk along the South Bank, under overcast skies, and snap photos of the river or the people, who always looked so much happier than he felt.

Bad pictures, he knows now, but there were moments when the clouds would separate just enough to let the sun pour through, and they were magic. He thinks maybe that’s when he fell in love with this, when he knew that it was for him—when, somehow, in the endless grey days, there was light, and in a photo, he could hold it forever.

He’s shaken from this reverie by the sound of the warehouse door creaking open, a body silhouetted in the new stark sunshine. _Ren_ , Hux thinks at first, but the body has the wrong proportions, too thin, too short. Somehow still almost recognizable, though, familiar somehow.

A quivering voice. “Sorry, um, I’m a bit early, uh, should I wait outside?” The door slowly closing behind him, the figure coming into view. Huge, watery eyes, protruding ears, a trembling mouth.

Hux remembers: years ago now, when he’d first moved here, a model who’d gotten to his knees after the shoot, fingers at the buttons of Hux’s trousers. Looked up at Hux with wet, pleading eyes. Hux had realized, then, what being a photographer in this business entailed—boys who thought you could give them everything, anything, in exchange for their mouths or their hands. He’d dragged the boy up by his shoulder and shaken his head, _it’s best you leave now_ , sent the boy out.

“Who are you?” Hux says, snide, digging in his camera bag.

The man steps further in. “Dopheld Mitaka, sir, we, um, worked together before, a few years ago.”

Mitaka. That’s right. The shoot had been forgettable, other than Mitaka getting on his knees. A lookbook for some now-defunct designer. “Are you sure?” Hux says. “I don’t remember.” He watches Mitaka’s face twitch, shame warming his cheeks red. Hux slips the lens cap from the camera, fires a test shot at nothing particular. “I was told I’d be photographing Kylo Ren,” he says, inspecting the photo.

“Kylo Ren?” Mitaka says, a note of wonder in his voice. “Oh—he’s quite the thing, isn’t he?”

Hux shrugs.

“Is it true he went on a rampage on your set? There are—rumors, you know.”

Hux wheels around. “Rumors of _what_?” His head spins with the fear that there’s talk of him and Ren together, or that he’s given Ren preferential treatment, or—anything. Something.

“Just that he’s quite difficult to work with, sir.”

“Oh.” Hux clears his throat. “Yes, that’s true. But the pictures are worth it.”

“They were very good pictures that you took with him.” Mitaka starts stammering. “Once I got this booking and I saw I’d be working with you again, I—I was so excited, that shoot we did for _Arkadia_ —those pictures are the best anyone’s ever taken of me. Every time someone looks at my portfolio, those are the ones they always comment on.”

_Stop talking about it_ , Hux wants to say. “Is Ren going to be here or were you booked in his place?”

“I don’t know, sir, I just showed up where I was told.” Mitaka shoves his hands into his pockets. “I sort of expected there to be catering—I skipped lunch.” He forces a laugh.

“Snoke does things on a shoestring budget. We’re lucky there’s light,” Hux says, turning away again. The very sight of Mitaka’s face has begun to irritate him.

There are a few long minutes of strained silence, only the sounds of the building’s foundation settling and birds swooping in through the broken windows, casting winged shadows on the floor. Hux fiddles with his camera, takes a few shots of the windows, regrets wearing Gucci to this god-awful place. The whole warehouse is dusty (he has a sneezing fit, at one point, and Mitaka murmurs _bless you_ so many times that Hux contemplates how best to murder him) and dirtying his floral-patterned Oxfords. No air conditioning, either, so at the very least he’s thankful he chose such a thin shirt, though he worries now that his sweat will ruin the delicate lace, the perfectly embroidered orange flowers. And he worries, too, that Ren—if he does show up—will make fun of his stick legs poking out of acid-washed shorts, or how pale he is, or his knobbly knees.

God. The fact that he is even wasting energy worrying about Ren is preposterous. Ren knows nothing about anything, really. His opinion is irrelevant.

Finally, the warehouse door opens again, and Hux hears Snoke’s booming voice shouting “Brendol!” Snoke is grinning, wearing a suit that went out of fashion probably ten years ago, struggling with the door. “Come help me prop this open,” he calls. “You too, Dopheld.”

With nowhere to rest his camera, Hux shoves it back into the bag and, grumbling, complies with Snoke’s instruction. Mitaka, still trembling like a small wet dog, follows. Between the three of them, they’re able to hold the heavy doors open, and a stream of men with bags of clothing and a wheeled clothes-rack makes its way into the warehouse.

“I’m thrilled for you to see these, Brendol, they’re just stunning,” Snoke says. “The silhouettes suit Dopheld and Kylo perfectly.”

“So Ren _is_ coming, then,” Hux says, unfortunately aware of the way his throat clenches upon saying Ren’s name.

“Of course—he’s our star. With no offense to you, Dopheld.” One of the men brings Snoke paperwork on a clipboard, which he signs and quickly dismisses. “I’ve booked your friend Phasma for makeup. Hope that’s alright.”

Hux nods and smiles and, as the men exit, they let the doors shut again. The bags have been stripped from the clothes and the rack overflows with hanger after hanger of Balmain. Hux wets his lips, moves to the rack, draws a finger over a quilted leather jacket. All the fabrics are luxurious, the looks themselves almost aristocratic. There is mink and velvet and gold and navy and polished buttons and riding gloves and boots and cummerbunds, all so perfectly tailored and crafted that Hux wants to press his face against them, touch every stitch.

Ren will look—unbelievable. Like some kind of French royal on a hunting trip. He runs a fingertip over the mink now, sighs at its softness. It’s lovely, it’s so lovely, and he thinks as much of carefully putting each piece on Ren as he does of removing them, less carefully, the mink crushed under Ren’s back as Hux buries his hands in it, Ren writhing beneath him.

“Do you like them?” Snoke says suddenly, his face appearing over the back of the rack. Hux sees now that Mitaka is standing on the other end, pressing his fingers to one of the embroidered accents on a jacket.

“They’re so much more beautiful in person,” Hux says. “I saw the pictures, but I had no idea.”

“That’s how it usually works,” Snoke grins. Hux ought to be used to this sort of subtle put-down of his work, but it somehow still stings—as if photos could never be enough, no matter how good, how perfect. He supposes that, on some level, Snoke is right. “Careful, Dopheld, that jacket’s thirty thousand dollars.”

Mitaka jerks his hands back, mutters, “Sorry, sir,” and hangs his head.

“Do we have lights coming?” Hux asks, pushing through the hangers. “Actually, you never told me the concept; I was under the impression that I’d be shooting Ren solo.” Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Mitaka frowning.

“I thought we’d just use natural light. I know you prefer that.”

“Not necessarily,” Hux starts, but then Snoke is tugging him over away from the clothes rack. No use resisting. Hux gives.

“The concept—Dopheld and Kylo don’t know this yet—well. Being gay is quite fashionable and profitable now, isn’t it?” Snoke says, milky eyes lighting up.

“If it is, no one’s told me about it.”

“We’re in a _moment_ , Brendol, and the moment must be seized.” Snoke draws his tongue across his upper lip, almost reptilian. “The concept is—a comment on society, hyper-masculinity, et cetera. In short—Dopheld and Kylo in a romantic entanglement.”

A feeling like a pebble hitting glass. “A romantic entanglement.”

“Kissing, touching, the like. Very sensual, with all the textures and such. Not pornography, if that’s what you were thinking!” Snoke laughs, claps a hand against Hux’s shoulder. “ _ORDER_ is a high-class publication. It should just be very tender and intimate. You’re very good at that sort of thing, especially when it comes to Kylo.”

The glass shattering. “Of course,” Hux says. “I can do that.”

“Excellent,” Snoke says. “You’re brilliant, Brendol, just like your father.” Snoke squeezes Hux’s shoulder, steps away to brief Mitaka on something, leaving Hux standing in the dark.

It’s just a photoshoot. Just pictures, not the real thing, not Mitaka and Ren actually—together. Still, doesn’t taking a picture of something make it real? That’s what he’s wanted, since that day Ren bent him over a makeup table: to photograph it— _them_ —and make it real. And now, just imagining Mitaka playing at wanting Ren makes Hux hurt. More than that, it makes him ashamed, embarrassed that he could feel such hurt, that he hasn’t told Ren that he—

Stupid. Stupid. Hux steps into one of the pools of light again and closes his eyes. Lets himself believe he’s somewhere else, or that he’ll be photographing something else. It was supposed to just be Ren. That was what he wanted.

At some point, Phasma wanders in, rolling a case of makeup behind her and toting a folding stool under her arm. “Morning,” she says to no one in particular, and she kisses Hux’s cheek as she passes. He doesn’t quite lean into it, doesn’t really acknowledge it, even, so she stops next to him. “Something wrong?”

He sighs. “I have a lot to tell you,” he says. “Did you know Mitaka was on this shoot?”

“If I had, I wouldn’t have accepted the job,” she says, snorting. “I can’t stand that prick.”

Hux lowers his voice conspiratorially. “Last time I worked with him, he tried to suck me off after.”

And Phasma laughs her cackling laugh, which echoes in the big empty warehouse, and Hux feels, if nothing else, a little lighter. She pulls him over (he’s always being pulled places, it seems) and unfolds her stool, gestures for him to sit down. “Let me put something on your dark circles,” she says, beginning to dig through a section of the makeup case. “You’ve been using the coconut oil like I told you.”

“It’s very handy,” Hux says, and does not think of Ren’s oil-slicked fingers pushing inside him, and how much he craves that feeling again.

She dabs concealer under his eyes, her fingers light on his skin. “What’d you need to tell me?”

“The concept of this shoot is—Ren and Mitaka in a _romantic entanglement_ ,” he says, making air quotes as he speaks. He makes no attempt to conceal his disgust.

“Well, that should sell subscriptions,” she says. “Eyes closed.”

“It’s crass,” Hux says. “He just wants to capitalize on, whatever, the queer dollar.”

“You only talk politics when you’re trying to pretend you don’t care about something,” she says, and Hux hates that she’s right. “Have you got a crush on Mitaka?”

Hux drops his face into his hands, pushing Phasma’s hands away. “I slept with him,” Hux moans, the words muffled into his palms. He thinks only vaguely of Snoke and Mitaka hearing him, hopes they’re occupied elsewhere.

“Mitaka?” Phasma says, in a horrified stage whisper.

“Worse,” Hux says. “Ren.”

Phasma carefully pulls Hux’s hands away from his face, and when Hux opens his eyes, she’s crouched in front of him, hair falling down into her eyes. “You’re a disaster,” she says. “Is that what you two were doing at that party?”

He shakes his head. “It was—after that shoot we all did, he just—afterward he came up to me and said I wanted to fuck him.”

“And you did.”

“He’s very persuasive,” Hux says. Phasma’s hands are still tight on his wrists. “I’m so stupid, Phas, he’s awful and I don’t even care anymore. Do you know he _kissed_ me? And it was bad, but I—”

She shushes him. “You need to pull yourself together, or Francis is going to come over here and ask why you’re going into hysterics, and I’m going to have to tell him that you’re fucking his boytoy, and then we’ll all be out of a job.”

“‘Fucking’ implies that it’s happened more than once, which it hasn’t. Just the once, because I’m—trying to maintain some semblance of dignity.” He peers over his shoulder, sees Snoke pressing a tartan sweater to Mitaka’s chest. Hux sniffs. “And I am _not_ going into hysterics.”

“Either way, you need to calm down, I think. Okay?” She slips a hand across one of Hux’s forearms, rubs gently. He forces himself to nod. “Maybe you ask Ren if he wants to go out for coffee after we’re done here.”

“Yes, and on our second date, we’ll share popcorn at the movies, and maybe we’ll have held hands by the third.” He scoffs. “I don’t want to date him! I just want—I don’t know. I was beginning to think I was one of those single-celled organisms who survives on, like, I don’t know, its own waste, but now I’m thinking maybe I’m not.”

Her eyes widen. “Was he really that good?”

“No! He was—it was like he’d never done it before. Like—” _Like I was the first person he’d ever seen and wanted_ , Hux thinks, finally articulating it to himself. He can’t bring himself to say it aloud. “I don’t know.”

“You’re into virgins,” Phasma laughs. “Not that I would have pegged him for one.”

“I don’t know what I’m into anymore. I’m absolutely going mad.” He sighs. “What a fucking mess.”

Phasma opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the creak of the doors cutting through the heavy air. Hux instinctively jerks around, and—of course. It’s Ren, late as usual, in ripped jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, despite the heat. He’s tapping away at his phone, not even really paying attention, and he sort of trips over his shoes (the same ones Ren was wearing at his apartment, oversized skate shoes more appropriate for a fifteen-year-old boy than a man Ren’s age).

“That’s where you’ve laid your affections,” Phasma mutters, standing again.

And, despite himself, Hux feels a warmth in his chest that he cannot attribute to the weather.

Snoke calls Ren over, pushes an outfit at him and insists he put it on first. “I’d better get ready,” Hux says, not wanting to be caught watching Ren undress.

He snaps a few more test shots of the light, and then of Snoke near the clothes rack, and Ren in the background behind him, pulling his shirt over his head. Hux watches through the viewfinder as Ren, slightly blurred, moves in his animal way. Light catches the flurries of dust and the knife of Ren’s shoulder blade. He thinks of zooming in, adjusting the focus, capturing the movement in a still picture, but—no. Zoom on Snoke’s gnarled fingers, zoom on the hangers against the clothes rack, zoom on anything but Ren.

This is his mantra as he documents the process of Ren’s preparation for the shoot. He has no lights to mess with, no backdrop to set up, so he takes pictures for himself, the way he used to. Phasma’s brush in a cake of blush, Mitaka’s eyelashes set against his cheeks. But he watches, distant, as Phasma darkens Ren’s eyes, highlights his cheekbones, and Hux thinks of following the path of her brush with his finger, and later his mouth.

His lips are dry. Soon Ren will be standing in that gorgeous light, and Mitaka’s hands will be the ones on him. Mitaka’s mouth, Mitaka’s body. If there is a hell, Hux is certain this is it.

“Brendol,” Snoke says, still observing from behind the clothes rack. Hux goes where he’s called, and is sort of grateful for the distraction from Ren. Snoke says, “I haven’t yet told them the concept for the shoot. I thought I’d ask you to do it. Ren may be more amenable to the idea if it comes from you.”

He wants so badly to protest. How can he be expected to tell Ren this—that he wants to see Mitaka all over him? He can’t say those words. Won’t. But Snoke holds him—all of them—in the palm of his hand, and there is a voice in Hux’s head suspiciously like his father’s, saying, _be kind, you owe it to him_. So Hux says, “Alright, I’ll let them know,” and Snoke nods, and Hux thinks of running outside to vomit and possibly to step into traffic, because it would be less painful, probably.

Hysterics. Phasma is right. He tries to remain calm while waiting for Phasma to finish with Ren’s makeup. She applies a gloss to Ren’s eyelids, making them shine slick in the light. He’s in an oversized navy coat with gold accents, an embroidered military insignia, and an obi-style cummerbund. Dark gray drop-crotch trousers, black riding gloves, a pop of red in the wrap shirt that hugs the distinctive curves of his muscles. He looks like the hero of one of the terrible bodice-ripping romance novels Hux’s mother used to read.

Which, Hux supposes, makes him the heroine, desperate to tear open that red shirt and fling himself against Ren’s chest. Hux steps closer to where Ren sits, feels Ren’s eyes on him.

“You’re hovering,” Phasma says, smoothing down Ren’s brows, but Hux elects to ignore her. He’s suddenly fixated on the pale stretch of Ren’s neck contrasted with the navy jacket—the urge to touch that luxurious fabric suddenly too much to bear, to swallow down. His fingers alight on the passant at Ren’s shoulder, and Ren jerks away from the touch.

“Sorry,” Hux mutters, watching the way Ren’s bottom lip quivers. He draws it into his mouth, bites down, floods the skin with red and white. _Fuck_ , if Phasma weren’t here, if Snoke and Mitaka weren’t here—he’d lower himself onto the seat of Ren’s thighs and grind himself against Ren (Ren’s hands would settle at his hips, pull him even closer) and whisper _I want you, I want you here_.

“What are those shorts,” Ren says. Ren sort of gestures with his head at Hux’s legs. “They’re, uh, really short.”

“It’s _hot_ ,” Hux says.

Finally, Ren meets his eyes, after taking an uncomfortably long moment to look Hux up and down. “I can see your nipples in that shirt,” Ren says. Phasma snorts, turns Ren’s face with her hands to finish his makeup, and Hux huffs. Ren grins a devious child’s grin, which Hux finds unfortunately charming, and, to his horror, makes him blush.

It takes restraint just to walk away, over to the pools of light where he’ll shoot Ren and Mitaka, not to escalate the situation. In a second, Mitaka is over there too, tugging at the hem of his sweater. Snoke has put the mink coat over Mitaka’s sweater, and Hux has decided that he hates it. What a waste, to put it on Mitaka rather than Ren, on this sniveling, wet-eyed boy of a man.

“Sir,” Mitaka says, very quiet. Phasma has lined his eyes in heavy black, which somehow makes him look even more like he’s on the brink of tears. “Sir, I was wondering—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop calling me _sir_ ,” Hux snaps. He cannot bear Mitaka’s prodding any longer. It’s enough now, realizing he’ll soon have to see him kissing Ren, all for the sake of—what, fashion? Art? Snoke’s whims?

Mitaka is trembling again. “Erm, how should I address you, then,” he says, stopping just short of adding another _sir_ at the end of his sentence.

“Don’t,” Hux says. “Don’t address me, don’t speak to me at all, unless—” Hux sighs now, realizing that Ren and Phasma and, worst, Snoke, have heard him raise his voice to Mitaka. He speaks again, dry. “What. What is it that you want.”

“Just, where to stand, that’s all,” Mitaka says. He’s begun to sweat already, but Phasma is focused on trying to get the perfect volume to Ren’s hair, combing back his curls.

Hux makes a wide gesture at the square of light. Mitaka gapes at him, dumb, then moves there slowly, tentatively. “Stay put,” Hux says.

His father’s voice is roiling in the back of his mind again. _You must always have compassion toward your subjects_ , he’d said once, long ago, when his hands were so much bigger than Hux’s, and they shelled over Hux’s on the corners of Hux’s camera—his first one, an old Kodak Brownie—as they pushed the camera toward Hux’s face. _Whether it’s a tree or a building or your friends or yourself_ (he laughs inwardly now at the implication that he’d ever had, or would ever have, friends) _you must be kind, your photos must be kind_. And so Hux has done that; for so long now he has looked at each and every thing in his viewfinder as if it were beautiful and precious and meaningful.

But now—now he does not want to be kind. He wants harsh light washing out Mitaka’s face, the angles all wrong, the bodies too stiff. He wants the photos to be cruel, wants them to be bad, just to spite Snoke and his father and everyone. Wants even his ugly photos to be beautiful, just to prove they can be. To send a message— _do not underestimate me, do not try to fuck me over again, I do not need you anymore_.

Any photo with Ren in it will be beautiful. This is what Hux has realized. He does not need anyone or anything but Ren. Fuck the rest.

Ren is standing, awkward on his feet, in his body, like a baby deer learning to walk. He passes too close to Hux, nudges him with his broad shoulder (intentional, Hux decides, though he certainly doesn’t mind) and stands in the light with Mitaka, a foot or so apart from him.

Hux clears his throat. “Let’s begin,” Hux says, switching on his camera. Mitaka is stock-still, terrified, but Ren gives that familiar defiant look, a kind of silent dare. “You’ll need to stand closer together.”

Ren raises an eyebrow. “You’re shooting us together? What are we, like, supposed to be doing. Is there a theme or something?” Mitaka only nods, too afraid to speak, and Hux’s stomach flops inside him. He’d hoped he might be able to avoid this conversation merely by positioning them as Snoke would like. But no, things are never easy when it comes to Ren or to Snoke or just to him, generally.

For a moment, he’s silent, knotting and unknotting the words in his mind. How to say, _I need you two to touch like you want each other_? No—Ren will have to be passive. Ren will have to be touched, not do the touching. That is the only way Hux can abide this. Ren is made to be seen, to be wanted. Mitaka as the viewer surrogate, Mitaka as photographer surrogate, Mitaka as surrogate for himself—Hux’s head spins with these ideas, the shame of wanting to place himself in Mitaka’s mink coat and tartan sweater and riding boots, touch Ren’s face with those leather gloved hands.

“Brendol,” Snoke says from somewhere far behind them. “The concept.”

“Right, yes, the—the concept.” He remembers Snoke’s choice of words earlier. “A romantic entanglement.”

Mitaka blinks. Ren’s nose scrunches. “What,” Ren says, the word clipped.

“The two of you, are, um, in a romantic entanglement. Of sorts. Francis’ idea.” Hux is sweating now, his collar suddenly too tight.

“Don’t be modest, Brendol,” Snoke says, and suddenly he’s right behind Hux, his hand crushingly tight on Hux’s shoulder.

“This is _your_ idea?” Ren says, his disgust palpable. The look in his eyes is frantic, almost fearful. “I thought we were shooting separately.”

“No, no, I—Francis is, he wanted a—a comment on, um, masculinity and, and, the moment, you know, the, um, _gay_ moment. Seized. So the two of you have to be—together.” _Fuck_. He’s stammering, he’s losing it, and Snoke is chuckling and patting his back.

“Brilliant and humble,” Snoke says. “I won’t take credit for your genius concept.”

Hux swallows down the feeling of betrayal burbling in his throat. Perhaps this had been Snoke’s plan all along, after seeing them on the rooftop together. _It hadn’t meant anything_ , Hux wants to say, to defend himself and Ren. But speaking up now risks his career, Ren’s career, and without this, he has nothing. “Alright,” Hux says. “Okay.”

Snoke squeezes Hux’s shoulder, then backs away again, a ghost disappearing into mist.

“We’ll start slow,” Hux says. “Work our way up to the kiss as we advance through the different looks. Um, Mitaka, I’d like your hand on Ren’s chest to start. Keep it elegant, look at Ren like he’s—” Hux stumbles over his words here, careful not to reveal too much. “Like you want to taste him.”

Mitaka slips against Ren, splays his hand across Ren’s chest, but Ren remains rigid, staring unblinking at Hux. “Ren, your hand over Mitaka’s, keep your eyes on me.”

Ren shakes his head. Stays still. The look Ren gives him crushes him. It’s not quite desperate, but it’s pleading, searing. _How could you do this? Is this what you wanted all along?_ Even through the viewfinder, Hux can’t bring himself to meet Ren’s eyes, so he zooms on details. Focus on Mitaka’s gloved fingers curled against Ren’s shirt. Mitaka’s mouth close to Ren’s neck, his cheek on Ren’s jacket.

Hux falls easily into this role once he deadens himself to the reality of what’s before him. Mitaka follows directions well, and there’s a hunger in his eyes that Hux feels like he must have projected there. A few quick full-body shots— _don’t look at Ren, don’t let yourself_ —and Hux is sending them to change into their next outfits, while Phasma looks on, worried. She offers some words of encouragement, but Hux hardly registers them. For now, he blocks out almost everything, save the tiny square of his viewfinder, which he uses as a shield. He does not take in the details of Mitaka and Ren’s new clothes, only that they are back in his line of sight.

“Your hand on Ren’s neck,” Hux instructs Mitaka. “Gently, not like you want to strangle him.”

The thumb over Ren’s Adam’s apple. Fingertips under Ren’s earlobe. “Like this?” Mitaka says, pressing his face against Ren’s cheek, forehead against Ren’s temple. Ren is blank, practically catatonic.

“Try to look like you’re enjoying this, Ren,” Hux says.

“I’m not,” Ren says.

Briefly, Hux fears that Ren might snap at any moment, as he had at their first shoot together, and go ballistic. But there is nothing for him to tear apart here, unless he’s going to rip down the warehouse plank by plank. And there is no rage in his voice, either, just a kind of resignation that strikes Hux as familiar to Ren, as though this is not the first time he has been someone’s plaything, someone’s prop.

Ren’s eyes are dark and empty and sad. Try as he might, Hux cannot ignore this.

“Ren, close your eyes,” Hux says. With this, Ren complies, blessedly. Long eyelashes against his face. Zoom on the glove, Ren’s lips, the insignia at Ren’s shoulder. The improper angle of Mitaka’s chin. “Turn Ren’s face toward you a bit.”

The picture is lush. Dark, rich fabrics flowing into one another, fur and velvet and jacquard, navy and red and gold. Black leather against a pale face, dark lashes, dark hair, a kind of tangible closeness even in the photo. Hux had wanted so badly to be cruel, but he’s only succeeded in committing his own longing to digital film. Two boys: one broad, the other thin; one passive, the other active; one wanted, the other wanting. Mitaka’s mouth is open just so, just enough that if he were to sigh, Ren would feel it on his skin, tickling the peach fuzz on his cheeks and chin.

Hux wants that. To be that close to Ren again. But it would be different if he were where Mitaka is, wouldn’t it? Ren would be fluid, not so still, and he would lean his face against Hux’s, maybe even trail his lips down Hux’s cheek, all the way down to his lips. It might not even be a good kiss, but Hux would allow it, smile into it, let Ren’s tongue sneak inside his mouth and brush behind his teeth.

He thinks of this while snapping these photos. It is the only way he can get through it, and when he sends them to change clothes again, he hurts. This time, Phasma does not speak to him, nor does Snoke. He is alone with his thoughts, and he decides that, afterward, maybe he will take Phasma’s advice and ask Ren out for drinks. Coffee or something. And maybe over cappuccinos he’ll admit what’s been on his mind: Ren, Ren, Ren, only Ren, despite his efforts to think of anything and everything else.

“For these, I want you two facing each other,” Hux says when they come back. Mitaka and Ren stand opposite each other, a distance between them, still. “Mitaka, you’re pulling Ren toward you by the lapels. I want motion, this is—this is the anticipation before the kiss.”

Mitaka seizes Ren’s lapels, stares up at him, and there’s a beautiful bend in his arm while Ren stands stony, looking lost. When Ren had kissed him, it hadn’t felt like this, what he wants to capture now. That feeling of standing on a precipice, not knowing how far one might fall. It had just been a shock, unpleasant, too eager on Ren’s part. But now, photographing this play at intimacy, Hux thinks he would take that unpleasantness again and again, a hundred thousand times, just to feel Ren’s mouth against his own. If Snoke has ruined his chances at that—well. He doesn’t want to think of it.

The tails of Ren’s long coat sway as Mitaka pulls him in, and Ren lets himself be moved. He’s a head or so taller than Mitaka, towering over him, and with his strange stooping posture, he looks like a tamed animal, guided by Mitaka’s hands. He swipes his tongue over his bottom lip. The shutter clicks, clicks, clicks, capturing anxiety and movement and hope.

“Ren, I need you to pretend you like Mitaka,” Hux begs. For the entirety of the shoot, Ren has been giving him nothing, leaving Mitaka to do all the work. But for this last set of photos—the kiss, the moment Hux has been dreading—Ren needs to be an active participant, or at least look like one.

Of course, Ren doesn’t move when Hux asks him to. That would be too simple. So Hux is forced to step forward, approach Ren and Mitaka. Being so close to them, with Mitaka’s fingers so close to Ren’s skin, makes Hux feel ill, as he had when he was a child, holding some nameless girl’s hand and trying to make himself believe he liked her. But this is worse, a thousand times worse. Mitaka still grips Ren by the lapels as if Ren belongs to him, and Hux knows it has to be this way, for the sake of the picture. And when Hux takes Ren’s hand (Ren jerks away at first, but Hux tightens his grip, guides him) and places it against Mitaka’s face, fingertips in Mitaka’s hair, Mitaka’s breath going unsteady at the contact, Hux does it for the sake of the picture. Because it is what Snoke wants, because he has to, because it is the only way to get through this godforsaken shoot and maybe, maybe, maybe get to kiss Ren again.

“You two can just, um, you can start whenever, and I’ll shoot.” Hux takes a deep breath, and Ren glances at him, and Hux has to look away. Mitaka turns Ren’s face toward him again, the motion so gentle it shatters something inside Hux. He gives Ren a tiny nod, tilts his own head up just so, and then presses his mouth to Ren’s.

Hux is stunned by the pang of jealousy that throttles through him, so shocked that he cannot even make his finger click the button atop his camera. Ren’s fingers twist in Mitaka’s hair, claiming him, and the slick sound of their kisses rattles in Hux’s mind. _Take the fucking picture, Brendol_ , Hux tells himself. He closes his eyes when he shoots.

When he looks again, Mitaka is beginning to lean away, but Ren is pulling him back in, hungry, his lips red and wet and wanting. Mitaka’s thumb sweeps across Ren’s cheek— _that’s mine,_ Hux thinks, _that belongs to me_ —and Ren crushes his mouth to Mitaka’s again. Hux makes himself take a few more pictures, but it’s over, it’s done.

“That’s enough,” Hux says, ashamed of how choked the words come. “We’re finished.”

It takes a moment for them to separate. Mitaka is panting for breath when they do, but Ren is stoic, unbothered. As if this all means nothing to him. From the back of the warehouse, Snoke applauds.

And then they’re putting on their regular clothes, and Phasma is packing away her makeup, and Snoke is carefully zipping the Balmain into hanging bags, and Hux feels wrecked. “Well done,” Snoke says, clapping him on the back, as he wheels the clothes rack out of the warehouse. Mitaka follows quickly behind him, as does Phasma.

“Call me, love, I’ve got to get to another shoot,” she says, and she pecks Hux on the cheek. He nods, knowing full well he won’t call her.

Then it is just him and Ren, Ren zipping up his jeans, Hux flicking through photos on his camera for ones to be deleted. He wants to wipe the entire memory card, pretend this shoot never happened, but Snoke would probably kill him. After a moment, it occurs to him that Ren is maybe waiting for him, and maybe he should say something.

“I kept that picture on my refrigerator like you said I should,” Hux says. He doesn’t mention how it found its way under the books on his bedside table, into his hand in the middle of the night more than once now.

Ren doesn’t acknowledge him. He’s busy tapping on his phone, scrolling through Facebook or Twitter or something.

Hux summons up his courage, feeling suddenly teenaged. “Um, would you—possibly want to go for coffee? I’m free the rest of the day and I thought maybe you would like to—”

“I have to be somewhere,” Ren says.

“Some other time, then,” Hux suggests, daring to hope.

“I dunno,” Ren says, and he shoves his phone into his back pocket. “I gotta go.”

He starts toward the doors, and Hux knows, _knows_ , he ought to hold his tongue, just let Ren go, but he can’t keep himself from talking. “It really wasn’t my idea, you know, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Yeah, I fucking believe that,” Ren says, and he’s out the door before Hux can stop him, and Hux is alone in the warehouse with only dust and light.

 

**Author's Note:**

> my most gracious thanks to [rexluscus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rexluscus) for betaing, and to [sailaway](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sailaway) and [icicaille](http://archiveofourown.org/users/icicaille) for the encouragement while writing. y'all are the best!
> 
> i'm still learning how to talk about photography on the technical side, so if anything stands out as blatantly incorrect, please let me know! 
> 
> people have made gorgeous art for this fic--you can see it all [here](http://huxcrying.tumblr.com/tagged/things-people-made-for-artificial-light)!
> 
> i'm [huxcrying](http://huxcrying.tumblr.com) on tumblr. come talk to me!


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